Research

Homeostasis can be described as the effort of an organism to maintain a state of inner balance despite external changes in its environment. This inner balance is necessary to preserves cell function and survival, and it is maintained by molecules that interpret the signals received by the environment and translate them into the correct output. But life is dynamic, and cells need to differentiate or respond to stress. During cell fate changes, homeostasis needs to be broken and a new state needs to be established, which the new cell will again seek to maintain for as long as it is appropriate.

Perturbations in homeostasis have been linked to developmental disorders, muscular dystrophy, premature aging, neurodegeneration, and cancer.

SMICH investigates the mechanisms that impact homeostasis at the molecular, cellular, and organismal level, using state-of-the-art approaches and techniques. We focus on cell fate transition and on the mechanisms that remodel the expression pattern of a cell during these processes. These mechanisms range from de novo expression (control of mRNA transcription, stability and folding) to proteome remodelling by protein degradation (via the Ubiquitin-Proteasome System and autophagy).

All state-of-the-art facilities needed for our research, including next generation squencing (NGS), mass spectrometry, bio-optics, metabolomics and much more, are available on campus. Therefore, there are no limts to creativity when it comes to choosing the best approaches. This translates into multidisciplinary PhD projects that offer outstanding opportunities for the scientific development of young scientists.

We train the next generation of scientists to take up the challenges of a complex, multidisciplinary field