Skip to main content
News Icon

Publication

Possible SARS-CoV-2 mass testing with new technology

Prof. Dr. Jonathan Schmid-Burgk heads the new working group for "Functional Immunogenomics" at the Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology at the University Hospital Bonn. As part of the newly established professorship and management position, the 34-year-old genome researcher is investigating the complex interplay between genes and our immune system. With the help of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), he is developing new techniques for protein analysis in living human cells with programmable gene scissors. The aim is to accelerate the modification of the human genome in order to analyze it. Prof. Schmid-Burgk is currently working on a mass test for COVID-19 using the LAMP-Seq process he developed. He brings his new techniques to the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation at the University of Bonn. Following his doctorate, for which he received the doctoral award from the Bonn University Society in 2017, his previous academic career led Prof. Schmid-Burgk to Cambridge (USA). There he spent three and a half years researching at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard - funded by a grant from the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).

Related news

Bild

Publication

Focus on the Guardians of the Antibody Response

—For the immune system to effectively combat pathogens, antibody responses must be precisely controlled. So-called follicular regulatory T cells (Tfr cells) play a key role in this process by limiting excessive immune responses and helping to maintain immune tolerance. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have now developed a robust laboratory method that allows Tfr cells to be generated from precursor cells and studied in a targeted manner. The results were recently published in the journal Cellular & Molecular Immunology.
View entry
Bunte Spirale

Publication

When the map needs an update

—Every time we move through a familiar environment, the hippocampus consults an internal map, a detailed spatial representation that is built up through repeated experience. But what happens when something unexpected occurs on a well-known route? Researchers at the UKB and the University of Bonn were able to demonstrate in a mouse model that the brain does not redraw its maps from scratch. Instead, it annotates them: preserving the underlying spatial layout while overlaying new information on top of the existing map. Their findings have now been published in the journal PNAS.
View entry
Dr. Clivia Lisowski und Prof. Christian Kurts

Publication

Immune cells in the liver help pigeons navigate

—How do pigeons find their way home safely over distances of many kilometers? A research team from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), the University of Bonn, the University of Duisburg-Essen, and the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Biology has now discovered a previously unknown mechanism: specific immune cells in the liver may help the birds detect the Earth’s magnetic field. The findings have now been published in the journal Science.
View entry

Back to the news overview