New insights in the evolution of mammals when re-entering water: The smooth, nearly hairless skin of whales and hippos look similar, but evolved independently. This is revealed by genomic and anatomical analyses partly conducted by Michael Hiller at LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics. The skin of these mammals fine-tuned for life in the water was long assumed to have come from a shared amphibious ancestor. The study published in “Current Biology” contradicts this assumption. It rather suggests that the last common ancestor was land-dwelling. Hence “aquatic” skin with specific adaptions developed more than once in mammal’s phylogeny. Read the article in “Current Biology” and the press release at Senckenberg (Photo: Zoo Duisburg gGmbH)

The German Phytomedical Society e.V. (DPG) awards TBG-PI Prof. Dr. Marco Thines of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt a prize for his research on filamentous pathogens. The Rudolf Heitefuß Preis is awarded for outstanding scientific achievements. Thines is studying the diversity of plant pathogens and their hosts. For example, he investigates oomycetes, a group that includes pathogens causing widespread plant diseases such as late blight of potatoes and tomatoes and downy mildew. Worldwide, plant-parasitic oomycetes and blight fungi cause losses in the billions every year. Despite their economic importance, only a fraction of their actual biodiversity has been discovered to date. At LOEWE-TBG Thines leads the project “Landscape genomics of plant-pathogen interactions”. Read press release at Senckenberg.

Prof. Henner Hollert und Dr. Andreas Schiwy from the Department for Evolutionary Ecology and Environmental Toxicology at Goethe University and the LOEWE Centre TBG, together with the environmental toxicologist Prof. Beate Escher from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig (UFZ) and the companies BiodetectionsSystems in Amsterdam and Scinora in Heidelberg seek to find alternatives to animal components in toxicology research such as serum or liver cell tisses. Their project won the “CRACK IT” innovation challenge by NC3Rs, a British organisation that works to reduce reliance on animal models in research. The challenge is sponsored by AstraZeneca and Unilever.

Senckenberg scientist Prof. Dr. Gunther Köhler and an international team from East Yangon University in Myanmar discovered a new species of mud snake. Morphological and genetic analyses showed that Myanophis thanlyinensis belongs to a genus so far unknown to science, the team recently reported in the journal “Zootaxa”. The genome of the holotype is already available for further research: it was sequenced as a novel digital taxonomic resource at the LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics.

The Mollusc of the Year 2021 has been announced today, February 1, 2021 by Prof. Julia Sigwart, Section leader at the Malacology Department of the Senckenberg Museum, Dr. Carola Greve Lab manager of the LOEWE-Centre TBG, Dr. Tilman Schell, Bioinformatician of the LOEWE-Centre TBG, and Prof. Dr. Yasunori Kano, secretary of the worldwide society for Mollusc Research (Unitas Malacologica).

The Mollusc of the Year 2021 was selected from over 120 nominations submitted by international researchers and members of the public. The jury then selected five species that entered the second round as finalists. During this final round, the LOEWE-Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics website was open for the public to votes.
The title “Mollusc of the Year 2021” was won by the Greater Argonaut (Argonauta argo). As a prize, Argonauta argo will get its whole genome sequenced at the LOEWE-Centre TBG

SGN/TBG press release on a publication in the journal Environmental Pollution

TBG press release on a publication in the journal Evolution Letters

TBG press release on a publication in the journal Nature Microbiology

SGN/JLU press release on the appointment of PD Dr. rer. nat. Miklós Bálint as Professor and Head of the Project Area Functional Environmental Genomics of the LOEWE Centre for Translational BiodiversityGenomics (TBG)

(TBG press release (in German) on a publication in the journal Marine Drugs)

TBG press release (in German) on a publication in the journal Nature

Press release of the Justus-Liebig-University of Gießen on a publication of the TBG research group “Animal Venomics” in the journal “Biomolecules”; in German)

TBG press release (in German) on a comment in the journal Science

4th Annual Meeting in Conservation Genetics – From Genomes to Application“ held in Frankfurt am Main from 26.-28.02.2020 at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum (press release in German)

with picture of LOEWE-TBG speaker Prof. Axel Janke) (press release in German

A deeper look into the treasure chest within microbes published in the online-magazine of Goethe-University Frankfurt

Blauwal-Erbgut enthüllt Paarung über Artgrenzen hinweg

Neues LOEWE-Zentrum untersucht Gen-Vielfalt bei Pflanzen und Tieren

Hessische Forscher wollen den Code allen Lebens knacken – Startschuss für LOEWE-Forschungszentrum

Wissenschaftler erhalten 66,5 Millionen Euro aus dem Forschungsförderprogramm LOEWE