DANDRITE Group Leader, Taro Kitazawa recently catched up with Gretchen Repasky from Nordic EMBL for their “Behind the Science'' profile series, to talk about his research and the search for epigenetic and transcriptional mechanisms that underlie neuroplasticity.

Franziska is working in the lab of Gilles Vanwalleghem with zebrafish to get a better

understanding of the gut-brain axis, especially in immunology. She will be exploring

which genes and molecular pathways are responsible for or involved in different

pathogenesis of diseases linked to the gut microbiota composition. Furthermore, Franziska will

study the mobilization of macrophages to compare inflammation levels between wild-type and germ-free larvae, as well as zebrafish larvae infected with Vibrio cholerae.

Welcome Franziska

With the poster "Exploring SorCS3 signaling during zebrafish, mouse and human brain development, Lucie Woloszczuková from Nykjær Group was among the five winners of the Poster Prize at this years' EMBL Partnership Conference in Heidelberg.

Congratulations Lucie!

Burgeoning research collaborations, new perspectives on own research and concrete plans for exploring the EMBL facilities and resources. These were just a few of the outputs for DANDRITE’s researchers attending this years’ EMBL Partnership Conference in Heidelberg.

Clara is a Master student from Leipzig University in Germany and will be doing a “Molecular Biology Project” in Vanwalleghem lab until the end of the semester. She will be studying the influence of the gut microbiome on anxiety behaviour in the zebrafish model. For this purpose they will set up a behavioural assay to study anxiety behaviour in zebrafish. Afterwards, they will use it to compare the anxiety behaviour of wildtype, germfree and recolonized (with only one bacterial strain) zebrafish, to draw conclusions on how the microbiome affects the hosts anxiety and therefore could play a role in mental health diseases. Welcome to DANDRITE Clara!

With the programme "Molecules to Ecosystems", Europe's leading life science research laboratory EMBL aims to link traditional molecular biology research to global agendas on climate, biodiversity and ecosystems.

If you answered yes, this new webinar series is for you - registration has opened!

The institutes of the Nordic EMBL Partnership have come together to offer all scientists in the molecular medicine research field online seminars and clinics in various topics under the umbrella of data science, bioinformatics, machine learning, and so on.

Sierra will be performing a variety of assays to help lab members with their research, including histology, genotyping, cell culture and other biochemical and biological analysis. She will also be helping with routine lab maintenance. Welcome Sierra!

Michelle Juknaviciute Laursen and Mads Eskesen Christensen won poster prizes at this years' "P-Type ATPases in Health and Disease"-conference at Banff Centre in Canada. Congratulations Michelle and Mads!

We are very happy to announce that we have recruited a new Group Leader to DANDRITE’s portfolio of top researchers. Please welcome Chao Sun!

Chao Sun is currently an EMBO & HFSP postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany. Chao will join DANDRITE in the Spring of 2023, where he will setup his new lab and office. Chao Sun will be housed at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, next to he lab of Group Leader Taro Kitazawa.

Christian will work alongside Ronja Driller on different purification strategiens of the vesicular polyamine transporter SLC18B1 in ordet to define/determine its molecular structure (using cryo-EM). They will also test different published inhibitors on its functionality as well as activity assays from the literature. Welcome Christian!

After working as an intern at Nabavi Lab for almost one year, Alejo has just started a new position as a Research Assistant. By combining electrophysiological recordings in awake mice and advanced computational analyses, he will continue to investigate the synaptic and circuit mechanisms that underlie the association of events separated in time. Congrats Alejo!

Natalia will work alongside Alex Harvey in PN lab on a project aimed to characterize the function of the Grin2B-3’UTR in learning and memory. Here they will be identifying RNA binding protein interactions and mapping out the Grin2B mRNA localization profile in neurons. Welcome Natalia!

Where are they now? Meet DANDRITE alumna Anne von Philipsborn and learn about her academic research career from neuronal circuits to reproductive biology.

On 1 September, Sofie Winther Andersen is starting as new lab tech in Kitazawa group, where she will be part of establishing the new lab. Sofie has previously been part of team leader Hanne Poulsen's lab, so many of you already know her. Nonetheless, please give Sofie a warm welcome!