Max Planck Institutes and Experts

The micronutrient selenium is an essential part of the human diet. As humans migrated out of Africa about 60,000 years ago they came to settle in environments with vastly differing selenium levels. Researchers of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have found evidence that human populations who live in regions that provide insufficient dietary selenium show signals of adaptation in the genes that use or regulate selenium.

Autophagy is a recycling system of the cell that prevents all kinds of cellular waste from accumulating. Autophagy sequesters such material in specialized containers, which are like other organelles of the cell surrounded by a flexible membrane. These containers transport their contents to cellular recycling stations for degradation. The researchers recently identified a specialized set of proteins that stabilize autophagic containers. Similar to recycling bins, these proteins form a stiff shell on top of the membrane to provide physical support.

In spite of the great progress of the biosciences during the last decades, the very line of division between the animate and inanimate world still remains elusive. One of the most distinctive features of living systems is their compositional and organizational complexity, but how complex does life really have to be? Our research aims to identify a minimal set of fundamental features and governing principles of biological cells - being the smallest units of life - to enable their comprehensive biophysical, i.e., quantitative characterization by a defined set of parameters.

Proteins are the workhorses of our cells. To fulfill their roles they need to adopt a functional conformation. Scientists have now experimentally determined how fast proteins are made and have shown that the correct speed is critical for functional folding. Perturbing translation leads to protein aggregates. This can cause severe developmental defects in mice. Their brain cells receive the wrong differentiation signal due to protein stress. These results answer a fundamental question of molecular biology and have far reaching consequences for neurodegenerative diseases and biotechnology.

How complex but stereotyped tissues are formed, maintained and regenerated through local growth, differentiation and remodeling is a fundamental open question in biology. To answer this question we need to understand how single cell behaviors are coordinated on the population level and how population-level dynamics are coupled to tissue architecture. Uncovering these regulatory principles will further facilitate development of stem cell therapies and effective treatments to slow down ageing and prevent age-related diseases such as cancer.