Open Bachelor and Master positions in the group of Dr. Daniela Zdzieblo - Endocrine Pancreas Tissue... (# of pos: 2)

Project: “Probing the role of bFGF in endocrine pancreas cell plasticity”

Background: Cell plasticity describes the ability of somatic cells to adapt to external factors by intracellular changes. This can reach from the adaption of single pathways to a complete switch of cellular identity (transdifferentiation). In the pancreas, the possibility of endocrine cell plasticity is of interest for developing new therapeutic strategies for diabetes mellitus. In juvenile mice pancreatic endocrine cell plasticity displays an important mechanism in early endocrine development. In humans, the extent of endocrine cell plasticity is highly debated and not well studied. We have found that bFGF alters the hormone expression of pancreatic endocrine cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). Based on our preliminary data, we hypothesize that bFGF signaling might be a key to induce endocrine cell plasticity. Testing this hypothesis is the aim the funded project.

Who we are: As part of the Chair for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine of the University Clinic Würzburg, the focus of the group of AG Zdzieblo lies on small intestine and endocrine pancreas Tissue Engineering. Thereby, our group has specified on the development of functional in vitro models and their use for developmental studies, disease models and drug tests. In the recent years, our group has built up an expertise for methods of different research disciplines including stem cell culture and differentiation, the generation and biological and synthetic ECM scaffolds and different analysis pipelines.

This awaits you: For support in the described project, we are looking for motivated students (Bachelor and Master). We offer well-equipped laboratories, a very cooperative working atmosphere and a comprehensive supervision by one of our PostDocs (Dr. Constantin Berger). As part of our group you will attend weekly group, institute and literature seminars and are free to join our regular social evenings. The interdisciplinary research environment of our chair provides you the chance to come in touch with a variety of exciting techniques and experts of various research areas. You will further have the chance to shape the project by bringing in your own ideas. In the course of the described project, you will get to learn the following methods:

• Culture of human induced pluripotent Stem Cells hiPSCs
• Differentiation of hiPSCs towards pancreatic endocrine cells
• Receptor inhibition studies
• Immunohistochemical staining
• Image analysis using an automated quantification software
• Molecular biology techniques
  • Gene expression analysis (RNA isolation, cDNA synthesis, RT-qPCR, qPCR data analysis)
  • Cloning (PCR, bacterial cell culture, Plasmid cloning)
• Chromatin Immunoprecipitation