Welcome to IBCS-BIP
We aim to decipher the molecular mechanisms of biological information processing in cells and cellular networks, and to bring this knowledge to proof-of-principle applications in information technology, biotechnology and medicine.
News

As an outreach activity between IBCS-BIP and the European school of Karlsruhe (ESK), every year the institute hosts some excellent ESK students to develop their scientific projects for presentation in the European School Science Symposium (ESSS). The ESSS is a science competition held annually that involves all the European schools. This year we are happy to congratulate the European School of Karlsruhe and specifically the students Isaia Petrucci and Arman Perrier, winners of the “senior” category for the best science project for 2023 presented at the ESSS hosted in Varese (IT) (https://esss.wp.eursc.eu/esss-2023/winners-finalists/). We are proud that Isaia and Arman´s project was performed at IBCS-BIP under the supervision of groups directed by Dr. Vallone and Dr Peravali with the title “RedBull toxicity experiments”.
Isaia and Arman as winners of the ESSS 2023 in the senior category will go on to represent the European Schools at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists later in the year.

[30.03.2023]
Gaëlle Hayot (Dickmeis lab) received the “best poster” award by the “Arbeitskreis 3R Praxis/Alternativmethoden der Gesellschaft für Toxikologie” for her work on “Phenotypic anchoring for OMICS-guided assessment of liver toxicity in zebrafish”, presented at the 8th German Pharm-Tox Summit in Ulm. Congratulations!
At the Annual Consortium Meeting of the European Project Precision Toxicology held in Barcelona in June 2022, Dr. Gaëlle Hayot (Dickmeis lab) and PhD Student Christina Cramer von Clausbruch (Weiss lab) won not only two nice coffee mugs but also the award for the best presentation showcasing their work on zebrafish and human cells as models to improve chemical safety. Congratulations!

“Multiomic atlas with functional stratification and developmental dynamics of zebrafish cis-regulatory elements “.
In a collaborative effort, an international consortium of researchers named DANIO-CODE (https://danio-code.zfin.org), including members of IBCS-BIP, generated, integrated and annotated large-scale zebrafish genomics data sets. These data are now provided as a fundamental functional genomics resource for the zebrafish community as well as for researchers interested in comparative functional studies. This work was recently published in Nature Genetics.

Podcast by Thomas Dickmeis on the zebrafish model: from ecotoxicology to biomedical research.
Link to Podcast
On Monday, 28.03.2022 at 18.30 (CEST), our zebrafish film „Magische Momente der Natur“ will be broadcast on Arte. Have fun watching it.
Many thanks for our fish teams for their initiative to make this happen.
KIT researchers Achim Dittler (MVM), Sonja Mülhopt (ITC) and Carsten Weiss (IBCS-BIP) discuss their latest findings concerning health effects of wood smoke as main constituent of air pollution on German TV (https://www.3sat.de/wissen/nano/210331-holzofen-nano-102.html).
A major research project to shape regulation and policy on chemical safety without the use of animal testing has been launched with the aid of €19.3M funding from the European Commission.
See PDF for more information
Interview about the project in Wiley Analytical Science (in German):
https://analyticalscience.wiley.com/do/10.1002/was.000600176/full/

Lennart Hilbert has contributed to a study that addresses how active and inactive genes are separated inside the cell nucleus. The according article ’Transcription organizes euchromatin via microphase separation' was recently published in the journal Nature Communications. Image copyright Hilbert et al. MPI-CBG, scale bar: 2 micrometer.
in the journal Nature Communications
Our perspective has been voted for by the nanoscience community as their top ACS Nano article of 2020!
Paper
Spotlight March 2021: Is Nanotechnology the Swiss Army Knife against Future Pandemics?
Link

Dr. Hector Sanchez-Iranzo’s interdisciplinary postdoctoral work at EMBL in Heidelberg exemplifies the research excellence and passion of Christine Beattie. By combining mathematical modeling, genetic and imaging approaches, Hector delineated a Notch signaling pathway that controls the vacuolated versus sheath cell fate decision during notochord differentiation. Further information on the Christine Beattie Award: https://www.izfs.org/awards/christine-beattie-award

Congratulations to Prof. Dr. Uwe Strähle for winning the Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Award 2020 of The European Zebrafish Society for his important contribution to the zebrafish community regarding infrastructure, networking and funding resources.
Uwe is the founder and former director of the European Zebrafish Resource Center (https://www.ezrc.kit.edu/) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology as well as the Founding Chair of the European Society for Fish Models in Biology and Medicine (https://www.ezsociety.org).