News from the Institute

ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is a rare and severe disease characterized by loss of motor neurons and neurodegeneration leading to death within 3-4 years.

The 2014 ice bucket challenge brought ALS to broader public attention but to date there is no treatment for ALS, despite intensive research in the field.
 

From 22nd to 23rd of February 2016, the LOEWE Ub-Net as well as associated PhD students and postdocs convened in the historical walls of castle Rauischholzhausen, the seminar house of the University of Gießen.

In two days, all students and postdocs presented their projects and the discussion lead was rotated amongst the participants.

Together with the Cluster of Excellence Macromolecular Complexes, the SFB 1177, and the DKTK Frankfurt, LOEWE Ub-Net is organizing the first Frankfurt Conference on Ubiquitin and Autophagy in July 2016. Both the ubiquitin system and autophagy are essential for maintaining cellular integrity and homeostasis. Defects in the two quality control systems are involved in the pathogenesis of numerous diseases. The conference brings together leading experts in this field.

Exploring daring new ideas, which may transform common wisdom – this is the aim of the relatively young Volkswagen Foundation initiative called Experiment!.

Dr Masato Akutsu, group leader at the IBC2 and BMLS, succeeded in the highly competitive call for bold research concepts. He secured just under 100.000 € to prove a concept which has the potential to revolutionize structure determination by protein crystallography.

The Institute of Biochemistry II (IBC2) recruits new group leader: Dr. Manuel Kaulich will be leading the newly formed gene editing research group. Dr. Kaulich is an expert on cell cycle regulation and CRISPR-Cas9-rAAV gene replacement technologies.