Publications

Just as life pulsates in big vibrant cities, it also prospers in crowded environments inside cells. The interior of cells is densely packed with biomolecules like proteins and nucleic acids. How is all this material distributed within a cell and what regulates its distribution? In a recent study pu...

Reading about donuts, croissants and jalebis makes you hungry? And you wonder how this is related to our research? Our latest publication in collaboration with the Hilbert and Nienhaus lab (both KIT) revealed that clusters of recruited RNA polymerase II  form in line with surface condensa...

Most cells of human body have DNA packaged and folded inside of their nuclei. The process of transcription, which also takes place in the nucleus, partially unfolds and redistributes DNA in a very distinct pattern. In a collaborative work, we have shown that the emergence of this pattern can be exp...

N. gonorrhoeae bacteria, colonize human epithelia and form nearly spherical aggregates, containing up to several thousands of cells, which are the infectious units of the gonorrhea disease. Formation of colonies could be described as an analogue of the condensation process....

A longer lifespan due to alcohol consumption? This is at least true for nematodes (e.g. C. elegans). Together with the group of Prof. Dr. Teymuras Kurzchalia (MPI-CBG Dresden) we found out that alcohol helps C. elegans to live twice longer and survive desiccation. For more information, cl...

Shape of my heart ..., oh no, shape of polymer loops was the topic of our recent paper, "The shape of pinned forced polymer loops" , which was just published in Soft Matter. We are looking forward for a possible experimental counterpart of the theory. Stay tuned!

How a bunch of identical bacterial cells manage to self-aggregate into a colony and furthermore make it to exhibit some heterogeneous behavior? Is it a beginning of a multi-cellular development? See our latest work on N.gonorrhoeae bacteria: "Pili mediated intercellular forces shape heterogeneous b...