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Prof. Dr. Dagmar Wachten

Member, Steering-Committee Member

Institute of Innate Immunity

Venusberg - Campus 1 53127 Bonn

dwachten@uni-bonn.de

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We aim to understand how cilia work and what their function is. Cilia are subcellular compartments that protrude from the surface of almost every mammalian cell. Cilia can be grouped into two major classes: a) primary cilia, which are immotile and b) motile cilia, which are also called flagella. A prominent example for the latter are sperm flagella. Ciliary dysfunction leads to severe diseases commonly referred to as ciliopathies. They comprise e.g. polycystic kidney disease, obesity, blindness, and infertility. However, the signaling pathways controlling ciliary function are ill-defined. To study ciliary signaling with high spatial and temporal precision, we combine optogenetics and genetically-encoded biosensors with high-resolution microscopy, mouse genetics, and biochemistry. This multidisciplinary approach allows not only to investigate ciliary signaling, but can be applied to any subcellular compartment to study its function with spatial and temporal resolution.

Dagmar Wachten

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Recent publications

  • Primary cilia signalling at a glance.

    Journal of cell science

    Authors: Dagmar Wachten, Søren Tvorup Christensen

  • Protocol for measuring cilium length using 3D confocal fluorescence microscopy, CiliaQ software, and a quality control pipeline.

    STAR protocols

    Authors: Daniel Burgdorf, Seniz Yüksel, Katharina Sieckmann, Jan N Hansen, Dagmar Wachten, Nathalie Jurisch-Yaksi

  • BBS8-dependent ciliary Hedgehog signaling governs cell fate in the white adipose tissue.

    The EMBO journal

    Authors: Katharina Sieckmann, Nora Winnerling, Dalila Juliana Silva Ribeiro, Seniz Yüksel, Ronja Kardinal, Lisa Maria Steinheuer, Fabian Frechen, Luis Henrique Corrêa, Geza Schermann, Christina Klausen, Nelli Blank-Stein, Jonas Schulte-Schrepping, Collins Osei-Sarpong, Matthias Becker, Lorenzo Bonaguro, Marc Beyer, Helen Louise May-Simera, Jelena Zurkovic, Christoph Thiele, Kevin Thurley, Lydia Sorokin, Carmen Ruiz de Almodovar, Elvira Mass, Dagmar Wachten

All publications by Prof. Dr. Dagmar Wachten