Departmental Research Groups

Group leader: Dr. Michael Borg

How complex multicellular organisms develop from a single cell into a fully-fledged living being is a fundamental and fascinating question in biology. more

Group leader: Dr. Agnieszka Lipinska

Studies of reproductive isolation hold the key to our understanding of how new species are formed. more

Group Leader: Catia Igreja

Environmental changes shape developmental and behavioral traits in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus. The molecular mechanisms associated with such phenotypic plasticity are under scrutiny at the Sommerlab. I have spent the last years studying how eukaryotic cells control messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein levels. more

Group Leader: Matthias Herrmann

Many scientists work in the field of entomology, few in the field of nematology and almost none in the area between. And while almost one million species of insects have been named so far, merely 20,000 nematode species have been formally described.  more

Group Leader: Christian Rödelsperger

How do processes like duplication, genomic rearrangements, and formation of novel genes shape genomes? Do these processes generate heritable differences in the phenotypes that we care about? To extend our understanding of these two questions, we combine large-scale sequencing data with statistical analysis to find the genetic basis of various traits in the nematode P. pacificus. more

Group Leader: Adrian Streit

The nematode genus Strongyloides consists of parasites that live as parthenogenetic females in the small intestines of their vertebrate hosts. In addition to producing parasitic offspring, Strongyloides spp. can also form a facultative free-living generation with males and females. more

Group leader: James Marsh, PhD

The community of microorganisms within the human gastrointestinal tract is one of the most diverse ecosystems known, yet we currently have limited tools to unravel its intrinsic complexity. Next-generation sequencing approaches have been invaluable for the characterisation of gut microbial distribution, abundance, and evolution. more

Group leader: Dr. Alexander Tyakht

While the taxonomic structure of gut microbiome in the world human populations has been outlined, its subspecies-level genomic richness in the context of co-evolution with the host, particularly the variability of its extrachromosomal content, is still to be elucidated. more