Zell- und Entwicklungsbiologie

Content: This lecture describes how embryonic development, particularly in animals, is controlled at the transcriptional level. It is rooted in a historical perspective on research in genetics, embryology and the birth of molecular biology. It reviews the basic molecular mechanisms of Eukaryotic transcription of DNA into RNA, as well as the different levels of regulation of this process. The lecture has a strong emphasis on cis-regulatory elements and much less emphasis on epigenetic regulation. Finally, the lecture examines the consequences of the molecular processes on cell specification and differentiation, tissue patterning and morphogenesis, as well as species evolution. 

Learning outcomes: The students will have an overview on the transcriptional control of embryonic development. In particular, the lecture highlights the relationships between different levels of biological complexity, from molecules to cells, to organs, and to the entire organism. In addition, the lecture provides a solid refresher on the basic mechanisms of gene transcriptional regulation.

Centrioles/basal bodies are at the heart of many human disorders ranging from cancer to congenital heart diseases and microcephaly. In this seminar, we will explore this fascinating organelle and its molecular functions.

Content:

The regulation of transcription is a central process of biology for which, despite decades of study, a detailed mechanistic understanding is still missing. In recent years an exciting quantitative revolution has been underway in this research field, offering an excellent example of the potential of interdisciplinary research. In this seminar, we will discuss recent publications in this research field:  starting from the simpler case of transcriptional regulation in bacteria, we will see how quantitative fluorescence microscopy methods allowed researchers to visualize the central dogma of molecular biology as it unfolds in a living cell, one molecule at a time. We will see how biophysical models have been used to interpret quantitative data, creating mathematical models that are both descriptive of the underlying molecular mechanisms and able to establish a quantitative link between genotype and phenotype. We will then move on to see what challenges arise, both experimentally and in terms of mathematical modelling, when one tries to extend the approaches used in bacteria to study transcriptional regulation in eukaryotes with a focus on Drosophila blastoderm segmentation.

Learning Outcome:

By presenting and discussing examples from the recent literature, the students will get an overview of the recent interdisciplinary research at the interface between physics and biology in the field of transcriptional regulation. After the seminar, students will be familiar with the state‐of‐the‐art biophysical methods to study transcription and understand the basics of thermodynamic models of gene regulation.