Search
Displaying results 71 to 80 of 87.
Systems Immunology
To see the immune system with the eyes of mathematics – that is the guiding principle of the department Systems Immunology. Mathematical models help to faster and better understand diseases that are associated with immune functions. Read here how scientists use mathematics to investigate chronic inflammatory diseases, the regulation of adaptive immune responses, and the interaction between the nervous, the endocrine and the immune system.
RNA Synthetic Biology
RNA is a ubiquitous molecule of life that plays intimate roles in how cells function and make decisions. These same properties can be harnessed to create a new generation of engineering tools to further interrogate the properties of biology and control how cells behave. The “RNA synthetic biology” group aims to better understand the roles RNA plays in biology and to exploit these roles to improve how we study, diagnose, and treat infectious diseases in humans. This department is located at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI).
Synthetic biology of microbial natural products
The Bozhüyük group focuses on bacterial natural products, with unique structures and bioactive properties. The group studies modular assembly lines like polyketide synthases (PKSs) and non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs), which produce many essential clinical agents – but are especially valuable to develop new anti-infectives. This group is located at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) .
Structural Infection Biology
To understand and eventually manipulate pathways that control the interaction of pathogens (e.g. bacteria, virus, parasite) with their hosts (e.g. human, plants) requires an interdisciplinary research approach, which often combines different fields of research such as cell biology and microbiology. In our laboratory, however, we take a closer look at the processes occurring during an infection at the cellular and atomic level by harnessing a variety of modern biophysical methods that allow addressing the spatio-temporal dynamics of an infectious disease at a high resolution. The department is located at the Center for Structural Systems Biology ( CSSB ) at the heart of the Germany’s largest accelerator center DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) in Hamburg.
Structure and Function of Proteins
Structural biology is a powerful method to derive an understanding of the molecular basis of biological phenomena by visualizing the involved biomacromolecules at atomic resolution. The Department Structure and Function of Proteins uses protein crystallography to investigate proteins that play a role in infectious disease, e.g. by controlling the production of toxic molecules or by acting as toxins themselves. Our research in structural biology is complemented by biochemical and biophysical methods, and we employ all of these technologies to also aid drug discovery projects at the HZI.
RNA Biology of bacterial infections
The Vogel lab strives to chart the diversity of noncoding RNA functions and RNA-binding proteins in major bacterial pathogens and in the hundreds of different bacteria that make up the human microbiome. We develop new RNA deep sequencing-based techniques to capture the RNA world of any microbe, ideally at the single cell level. We want to understand how and why bacteria use RNA as a regulator during infection and exploit this knowledge to target pathogens and edit the microbiota with precision. Projects focus on several bacteria from our major workhorse Salmonella Typhimurium to anaerobic microbes that are associated with colorectal cancer such as Fusobacterium nucleatum . This Department is located at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI).
Recoding Mechanisms in Infections
Many important viruses such as Ebola, Influenza, and HIV use RNA as genetic material. These viruses have an extremely small genome size compared to the eukaryotic host genomes, and therefore employ various alternative translation strategies such as stop codon read through, leaky scanning, non-IRES initiation and ribosome frameshifting to express their genes by the host translation machinery. Interestingly, the same strategies are also used in the host’s cellular gene expression. With our research we aim to understand how translational recoding changes the rules of standard decoding, allows simultaneous encoding of multiple proteins from the same mRNA and regulates gene expression in time and space. This group is located at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI).
Personalised Immunotherapy
Our motivation is to address fundamental questions of human immunology and translate them into personalized therapies and diagnostics. Specifically, our laboratory discovers new applications of antibodies and B cells to treat and prevent human infectious diseases. Effective vaccines against some viruses that escape antibody responses remain elusive. To tackle this challenge, we develop methods to better understand B cell responses, the cells that produce antibodies. We design tailored vaccines and provide novel solutions for infection diagnostics. This Department is located at the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine ( CiiM ).
One Health Surveillance
The One Health Surveillance Core Unit facilitates the comprehensive long-term collection of samples and data on human, animal and environmental health. This sample collection serves as the basis for research in HIOH‘s departments, as well as for collaboration with our partners.
Epidemiology
Epidemiology conducts research on health and disease at the population level – infection epidemiology is concerned with contagious diseases. Their tools and methods are systematic queries, clinical examinations and laboratory diagnostic documentation for both healthy and afflicted individuals, as well as statistical analysis of the compiled data. Causes and risk factors for infections can thus be identified. Infectious diseases epidemiology contributes to the development of preventive measures, early detection and therapy for diseases. Moreover, it examines the efficacy of such measures. Thus epidemiology ties in with scientific findings in basic research as well as medicine, and examines these processes at the population level.
