On 1st of December 2023 Tobias Friedrich successfully defended his doctoral thesis titled „Deciphering the Notch Pathway: A Bioinformatics Analysis of the RBPJ/Notch Axis“. During the defense he demonstrated a deep understanding of the complex scientific concepts and was always in control of the situation. Tobias performed his work as part of a collaboration between the group of Tilman Borggrefe and our group. We congratulate him on this outstanding achievement and wish him all the best for his future projects, which he will pursue as a postdoc in the working group of Robert Faryabi (UPenn). Although we will certainly miss him greatly as a vital member of our group, we look forward to following his ongoing scientific journey with enthusiasm.

The Cardio Pulmonary Institute consists of researches from Giessen, Frankfurt and the MPI for Heart- and Lung-Research in Bad Nauheim. Every year since its founding in 2019 associate researches get together to listen to incredible talks or present their work on posters, as did David from our group. Here he discussed his work on the “Single cell transcriptomics of mouse lungs after smoke exposure” with many interested colleagues. It was exciting to experience such a crowd of scientists and to see what kind of incredible research we are part of.

In case you want to get more information on the speakers and posters presented at the conference, here is the link.

We had a fantastic hike at Dünsberg, followed by a pleasant dinner. We explored nature and had an incredible time! The moments when we laughed a lot strengthened our team spirit. We supported and encouraged each other at every step, creating unforgettable memories. It was a day full of joy, adventure, and a deep sense of camaraderie.

Max Pommert had the opportunity to represent our and Michael Kracht's groups at the TRR81 Spring School "Molecular Control of Gene Expression" in the Kleinwalsertal and gave a talk about his ongoing work on PROST (Pipeline for RNA-seq Gene Expression and Detection of Alternatively spliced transcripts). He met familiar faces from the 6th TRR81 meeting in Egmond last year, as well as new PhD students and had stimulating discussions while enjoying the Austrian landscape and cuisine.

We are excited to welcome Sophie-Marie Wind again. After joining our lab as an intern last year, she will now pursue her master‘s project on resistance mechanisms to inhibitors of oncogenic KRAS using bioinformatics and systems biology methods.

Tobias Friedrich, a bioinformatician shared between Tilman Borggrefe's and our group, had the chance to present a poster of his most recent publication on Notch-independent functions of the transcription factor RBPJ at the Gordon Research Conference entitled "Notch Signaling in Development, Regeneration and Disease". There he had the chance to exchange his thoughts and ideas with a crowd of internationally renowned scientists from diverse fields. The multi-omics study was well perceived amongst the other attendants and we are happy to have him back in the office (albeit still a little bit jet-lagged).

In case you may have missed the paper, follow this link.

We are happy to announce the publication of our story devoted to the important transcription factor RBPJ, which is known as the transcription factor mediating the effects of Notch signaling pathway. The experimental work was conducted and conceived in Tilman Borggrefe's lab and Tobias has provided a wealth of bioinformatic analyses providing a new perspective on the role of this enigmatic transcription factor. The paper has been published in Nucleic Acid Research.