Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine

November, 15th, 2024

Welcome, Mona!

Mona has joined the group as a biological-technical assistant and is now actively supporting us in the laboratory. We’re excited to have her on board and look forward to working together!

November, 8th, 2024

Goodbye (for now) Anika

Anika is heading off on maternity leave to embark on the exciting journey of parenthood. We wish you all the very best during this precious time and eagerly await the day we can welcome you and your little one back. Take care and enjoy every moment!

October, 21th, 2024

Welcome, Anna!

A big, warm welcome to Anna! What an exciting career shift - from economics and marketing for DIY retail products to now supporting the promotion of biomedical research and medical curricula. We are thrilled to have you on board! Your expertise and energy is a fantastic addition to our team as we continue advancing medical education and molecular medicine. Welcome to the journey!

October, 8th, 2024

A visit to the future students’ lab!

Christine, Jana, Julia, Sven, and Leen got a sneak peek at the R5 construction site - a massive new campus building! Soon, it will house the state-of-the-art medical students’ lab and a brand-new cafeteria and restaurant. This incredible facility is gearing up to welcome the 2025/2026 cohort, and we can’t wait to see it come to life.

September, 25th to 28th, 2024

Peroxisome fans meet in Sant Feliu de Guixols

From September 25th to 28th Anne, Britta, Julia und Sven travelled to Spain for the Open European Peroxisome Meeting (OEPM 2024). We presented posters, Britta gave a flash short talk and Julia presented our data on peroxisomes in the heart. Exciting discussions, fascinating talks, beautiful location!

September, 20th, 2024

Fast and multiplexed super-resolution imaging of cells

On 20th of September Dr. Roman Tsukanov from Göttingen visited our lab and gave an exciting talk about super-resolution imaging and related methods. Thank you for finding your way to Bielefeld!

September, 18th, 2024

We welcome our first MD student

Linnéa is the first medical doctoral student in our department. She will analyze the readthrough isoform of AQP4 (an astrocyte water channel) as a target of Neuromyelitis optica autoantibodies. Welcome Linnéa!

September, 2024

Visiting Scientist from Frankfurt

In September Anna visited our lab for three weeks to establish a microscopy-based cell-to-cell fusion assay. Thank you, Anna, for your visit and your great contributions to our discussions!

August, 2024

Future scientists - Welcome to the team!

On August 07th and 20th two new team members arrived: Kim Helena and Levin! We are so excited to welcome you into this world! We wish you and your parents all the best a few extra hours of sleep!

July, 8th, 2024

Daniel and Rebekka set new cake standards and say goodbye to our group. Daniel has completed his Master's thesis with Anna on Dysferlin and Rebekka has completed a research internship with Daniela on Translational Readthrough. We would like to thank them both for their excellent work and dedication. All the best for the future and keep up your enthusiasm and curiosity!

July, 3rd, 2024

Goodbye (for now)

Anna and Raphaela (not on the photo) are going on maternity leave to take care of our future scientists. We wish you all the best for this wonderful time and look forward to welcoming you and your little ones back 💐

July, 1st, 2024

July 1st Welcome to our group Leen and Christine!

We are very happy to welcome two new talented colleagues to our team!

Leen has just completed her training as a (Bio-)Technical assistant and is now actively supporting us in the laboratory!

Christine is a new postdoc in the lab and will support us in biochemistry teaching. Her fields of expertise are gene technology and neurobiology. She is genuinely curious about all aspects of science, and in particular, about the nervous system in health and disease.

June, 18th, 2024

The end of a long journey into the heart of the heart

Julia, Manar, Leonie and Sven participated in the final retreat of the SFB 1002 at Schloss Waldeck.  We all had a great time with many scientific presentations and discussions. Sven gave a talk entitled title: "A big heart for peroxisomes - a big heart without", in which he presented our latest findings on the contribution of peroxisomes to cardiac metabolism and heart failure. The SFB closed after 12 very successful years – we had the opportunity to participate from year 5. Many thanks to the team and especially to Gerd Hasenfuß (second from left) for this great experience and the opportunity to be a part of this great network!

June, 14th, 2024

Team “RunThrough “

At the Summer Open Air Festival for Bielefeld University employees, our "RunThrough" running team placed in the strong midfield of this year's running competition and was the highest scoring team of the medical faculty! Thanks again to our coach Dennis for the organization - training for next year has already started (and then we are expecting participation of at least one more team from the med faculty).

The evening ended with a great soccer public viewing (opening of the European Championship) - now we have to wait and see who will win the betting round...

June, 3rd, 2024

Wandertag in den Tierpark Olderdissen.
A lab outing led the team to the Heimat-Tierpark Olderdissen. Between very friendly goats and surprisingly acrobatic bears we got a peek behind the scenes and some juicy gossip about the resident animals. We thank our lovely tour guide Vanessa from Zooschule Grünfuchs for the educational and fun experience!

June, 1st, 2024

Start PhD student Daniela Driftmeier we are thrilled to welcome Daniela Driftmeier to our team. As a PhD student, she will be doing research on the consequences of PEX10 mutations and treatment strategies based on viral vectors.

May, 27th, 2024

We are excited to announce that we are hosting two special visitors: Herbert Repkow and Benedikt Weiling. Thanks to a very generous donation from the Marlies and Herbert Repkow Foundation, we have been able to purchase a single molecule localization microscope! This incredible addition to our lab allows us and our cooperators in the university and in the clinics to perform super resolution microscopy and investigate biological processes that were previously invisible to us. Many thanks to the Repkow Foundation for their invaluable support!

May, 15 th - 16 th, 2024

Leonie and Julia participate in the International Symposium “Innovation in Heart Failure” by SFB1002 in Göttingen. They met with with colleagues and presented their amazing poster on peroxisome function in the heart.

April, 30th, 2024

Let´s Party!

In celebration, we're kicking off the BBQ season with a cozy after-work BBQ. It's a perfect opportunity for us to come together, enjoy good food, and create lasting memories. We are also very keen to experiment, because truly everyone is allowed to contribute to the music playlist.

April, 24th, 2024

Now we have to say goodbye to Isabel. The handover of the secretariat to Anika was a very smooth transition. Great job!

April, 1st, 2024

Welcome to our department BCMM, Anika and Simon!

We're excited to have you joining us. Let's make great things happen together.

Anika supports our team in management with all the experience she brings to the table and everyone is looking forward to her being the new point of contact for all the important questions.

And it is very exciting to introduce Simon, our newest Postdoc connecting with us and bringing an incredible expertise in microscopy and a vast range of knowledge in physics and we are convinced that this knowledge will drive our research even further.

March 31th, 2024

Far from Easter-Sunday or any normal working day, Sven had the outmost pleasure to be hosted by Einat Zalkvar. To add to the honor, he was the first official guest of the newly opened ZalckvarLab in Ramat Gan, the new home for peroxisome-fans, -nerds, and -addicts! Dear Einat, dear Tamar, dear Yeuda, thank you so much!

https://www.zalckvarlab.com/

March 25th, 2024

Our 3D printer is working! We are making our own hot red western blot trays and other plastic ware. In the future, we print protein structures and more advanced stuff. Cool!

March 20th, 2024

Annual Research Day of the Medical Faculty EWL with now 250 participants. Britta and Daniela presented overviews of their PhD projects, as well as introductions into peroxisome and readthrough research, repectively. In the poster sessions, Leonie, Anne, Dennis, Julia and Matthias presented their research and more specific topics. The meeting closed with a get-together for more networking.

February 22th, 2024

Time for lab pictures! On January 30th, our group participated in a foto shoot and today we got the pictures, which turned out really nice. Now we can use professional pictures of our new lab!

February 20th, 2024

In February, two of our manuscripts have been accepted for publication! "Tissue-specific roles of peroxisomes revealed by expression meta-analysis" by Matthias, Leonie, Julia and Sven.
Today, "Systematic and quantitative analysis of stop codon readthrough in Rett syndrome nonsense mutations" has been accepted for publication. The paper is authored by Dennis, Julia and Sven in collaboration Göttingen MD students Lina and Adrian and with Rina Arbesfeld from Tel Aviv. Thanks to all contributors! Time for some refreshments.

December 7th 2023:

We celebrate our Christmas party in the R2 building. Lots of homemade treats, appropriate music and, of course, a Christmas tree! The annual highlight, however, was our notorious "Oddity Secret Santa".

September 4th 2023:

Group excursion! Canoeing in perfect weather from Bad Oyenhausen - 13 km to Porta Westfalica. Along the way, we mastered rapids, spotted a wide variety of birds and enjoyed the tranquility of nature. At the end of the day, we stopped off at Finca Barcelona for food and drinks.

August 7th to 10th 2023:

FINALLY! Our long-awaited and long-prepared for lab relocation to the newly opened R2 building on Morgenbreede 3. With the active support of everyone (and a moving company) the entire laboratory equipment went a few 100 meters from R1 to our new headquarters on 3rd floor of R2 within in three days. Come visit us in our pretty, fancy, modern just beautiful laboratory space!

September 22nd to 24th 2022:

Julia and Sven traveled to Aveiro, Portugal, to exchange ideas with the peroxisome community at the 8th Open European Peroxisome Meeting (OEPM). Julia presented on calcium in peroxisomes.

September 14th to 16th 2022:

Dennis, Anna and Sven attended the Molecular Basis of Life 2022 Conference in Düsseldorf. The GBM conference offers researchers a broad spectrum of scientific topics from the life sciences to network on: from synthetic biology and molecular cell biology to structural biology. Anna and Dennis presented posters on their PhD projects.

September 2nd 2022:

BCMM goes hiking! From Halle (Westfalen) a 20 km hike along the Hermannsweg back to Bielefeld. We passed many viewpoints in the Teutoburg Forest and thoroughly enjoyed the day out in nature. Eventually, we had a well-earned snack at Finca Barcelona.

May 9th to 12th 2022:

Matthias and Anne joined the EMBL symposium “Cellular mechanisms driven by phase separation” in Heidelberg during May 2022. The conference brought together scientists form cell biology to physics, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the field, to discuss condensates in biology and disease.