Science
Human evolution – a never-ending story
Interview with Mark Stoneking, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany The publication of Charles Darwin’s seminal work on ‘The Origin of Species’ 150 years ago had a profound effect on the way we think about the origins of the human race. The discovery of hominid fossils in East Africa half a century ago gave fresh impetus to the field of anthropology. The development of powerful DNA technologies enabled us to investigate genomic diversity in different human populations to give a much more detailed picture of our evolutionary past. In this interview, Mark Stoneking from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) outlines the current view on the evolution of modern humans. He explains how advances in molecular technologies shed new light on old questions and comments on the problem of biological evolution versus cultural adaptation. Citation: (2009). Human evolution – a never-ending story. Interview with Mark Stoneking. B.I.F. FUTURA 24(2), 87-90. Copyright: © Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allow the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author, copyright holder and source are credited.  Download PDF of the article (72 KB)
Ethical problems of therapeutic cloning
An argument from the embryonic potential
Klaus Staudacher, Wilhelm Vossenkuhl Munich Research Center in Ethics (MKE), Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU), Munich, Germany The essay deals with the moral status of the embryo, in particular, with the specific moral problems caused by the technique of therapeutic cloning. It focuses on the argument from potential according to which the potential of the embryo to develop significant moral qualities is itself morally significant. After clarifying the ontological and normative aspects of this argument the essay pleads for a ‘moderate’ position: the embryo at the blastocyst stage is not a person, but it has nevertheless a moral status that requires protection from all detrimental actions which are not aiming at the benefit of a patient. Citation: (2009). Ethical principles of therapeutic cloning. An argument from the embryonic potential. B.I.F. FUTURA 24(2), 91-98. Copyright: © Klaus Staudacher, Wilhelm Vossenkuhl. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allow the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author, copyright holder and source are credited. PDF of the article Download PDF of the article (188 KB)
Research Articles of B.I.F. Fellows (Results)In these final accounts, B.I.F. fellowship holders present a brief summary of the research results and publications of their PhD project. PRC1 and Suv39h specify parental asymmetry at heterochromatin in early embryosMareike Albert Department of Epigenetics, Friedrich Miescher Institute, Basel, Switzerland Long-term synaptic depression is expressed in changing presynaptic and postsynaptic morphologyNadine Becker Department of Cellular and Systems Neurobiology, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany Invariance computations of and in time –lessons from the grasshopper auditory systemFelix Creutzig Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany Actin safeguards the serum response factor co-activator MalSebastian Guettler Transcription Laboratory, London Research Institute, Cancer Research UK, London, UK Neural substrates of temporal discountingJohannes Haushofer Program in Neuroscience, Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA Effects of errors in a cognitive learning taskMarco Loh Computational Neuroscience Group, Department of Technology, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain Functional homology of cellular CD40 and Epstein-Barr virus LMP1Julia Rastelli Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GSF), Munich, Germany Self-limitation of inflammatory T cell responses: Notch induces interleukin-10 production by TH1 cellsSascha Rutz German Research Center for Rheumatic Diseases (DRFZ), Berlin, Germany Transcription interference as a new model of imprinted gene expressionStefan Stricker Center für Molecular Medicine GmbH (CeMM), Austrian Academy of Science, Vienna, Austria Download Research Articles (1,2 MB)Copyright: © These are open-access articles distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allow the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author, copyright holder and source are credited.
New Projects
The Board of Trustees of the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds meets three times a year to decide upon the allocation of PhD scholarships. On October 11 to November 1, 2008, they discussed 45 applications – preselected from the original 137 applications sent to the foundation. Once again, the limited resources available meant that a considerable number of convincing applications had to be turned down. 16 projects and fellowship holders were selected, 15 grants were taken up.
Large non-coding RNAs in pathogen-sensing pathways of innate immunity
Nicolas Chevrier
Division of Medical Sciences, Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA, USA
The mechanism by which the protein kinase Tpl2 is activated by IL-1β
Hosea S. Handoyo
MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit, College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK
Traversing the nucleosome barrier during transcription
Maria Hondele
Gene Expression Unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany
Single-molecule studies of transcription
Marcus Jahnel
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, and Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany
The Nrf2 transcription factor in liver homeostasis and repair
Ulrike Köhler
Institute of Cell Biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Assessing the potential of cryptic epitopes as T cell antigens
Carsten Linnemann
Division of Immunology, The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Understanding clathrin-mediated endocytosis in growth and multicellular development
Laura Macro
Laboratory of Cellular Biophysics, Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA
Study of molecular transport through the nuclear pore Complex
Oliver Otto
Biological and Soft Systems, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Linking connectivity and function of microcircuits in the cerebellum
Sarah Rieubland
Neural Computation, Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London, UK
Analysis of dendritic cell function in vivo
Catharina Schrauf
Institute for Infection Immunology, Twincore Centre of Experimental and Clinical Infection Research, Hannover, Germany
GABAergic plasticity in hippocampal slice cultures
Anne Schümann
Department of Cellular and Systems Neurobiology, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany
Function of micro RNAs in the regulatory landscape of neuronal differentiation
Sylvia Tippmann
Propagation and Dynamics of Epigenetic States, Friedrich-Miescher-Institute, Basel, Switzerland
Single-molecule fluorescence studies of nucleosome remodeling and transcription initiation
Barbara Treutlein
Department of Chemistry and Biochemisty, Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU), Munich, Germany
Exploring IRAP as a morphological and functional marker for cross-presentation
Mirjana Weimershaus
INSERM U 580, Hôpital Necker, Université Paris 5, René Descartes, Paris, France
Investigation of eukaryotic protein trafficking with bacterial cytolethal distending toxin
Irene Wüthrich
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA
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Germinal centers (blue) formed by B cells in the spleen of mice. Article by Julia Rastelli.
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