Renkawitz Lab - News
2025
April 2025: Our discoveries on centrosome fracturing during cell motility are published in Science Advances (Schmitt et al, Protecting Centrosomes from Fracturing Enables Efficient Cell Navigation, Science Advances 2025).
February 2025: Our research group is part of the 2nd funding period of the DFG-funded priority programme SPP2332 "Physics of Parasitism".
January 2025: Welcome Nil! Nil joins us from Lyon for a research internship (Lyon, Claude Bernard University, Master in Molecular and Cell Biology).
2024
November 2024: Congratulations to Madeleine for receiving a postdoctoral fellowship by the MCSP Medical Scientist Track of LMU Munich for her research in the lab of Prof. Florian Gärtner in collaboration with our lab!
October 2024: Congratulations to Madeleine for defending her PhD thesis with outstanding marks!
September 2024: Happy to share our latest discovery on the preprint server bioRxiv, identifying that the centrosome is prone to mechanical fracturing during cell motility: Schmitt et al, Mechanical Centrosome Fracturing during Cell Navigation.
August 2023: Welcome Nelly! Nelly joins us for her research in the realm of her Dr.med. thesis (LMU Medical Faculty).
July 2024: Congratulations to Haohan for receiving a DAAD PhD scholarship to join our lab as a PhD student!
June 2024: Congratulations to Benjamin for defending his PhD thesis with outstanding marks!
June 2024, Benjamin's PhD celebration.
April 2024, Janina's PhD celebration (Petra, Jörg, Janina, Kasia, Benjamin, Mauricio, Madeleine Maria)
May 2024: Happy to share our latest findings on the preprint server bioRxiv, discovering parasitic hijacking principles of motile cells: Ruiz-Fernandez et al, Hijacked Immune Cells Traverse Microenvironmental Barriers by Positioning and Pushing their Intracellular Parasite Cargo, derived from a fantastic collaboration with the lab of Benedikt Sabass, and the lab of Markus Meissner and Javier Periz.
April 2024: Congratulations to Janina for receiving a postdoctoral fellowship by the MCSP Medical Scientist Track of LMU Munich for her research in our lab in collaboration with Prof. Christop Klein's lab!
April 2024: Happy to share our latest discovery on the preprint server Research Square, identifying microenvironmental regulation of extracellular fluid sampling: Braun et al, Microenvironmental Regulation of Macropinocytosis Facilitates Extracellular Fluid Sampling.
April 2024: See our latest review by Janina & Jörg on the principles of organelle positioning in motile and non-motile cells published in EMBO reports.
April 2024: Congratulations to Janina for defending her PhD thesis with outstanding marks!
February 2024: Jörg has been featured by the ‘Cell Scientists to Watch’ series by the Journal of Cell Science.
January 2024: Welcome Maria! Maria joins us for a research internship and her master's thesis research (Faculty of Biology, LMU Munich).
see Journal of Cell Science, Cell Scientist to Watch series
2023
see Kroll et al, EMBO J 2023
December 2023: Congratulations to Johanna, who has been awarded the Best Abstract Award 2023 in the category 'best method' for her doctoral research project (LMU Medical Faculty, DoktaMed).
December 2023: Our Lab Retreat goes to Augsburg and its Christmas Market.
November 2023: Janina's manuscript about the discovery of adaptive pathfinding by nucleokinesis during amoeboid migration has been published in EMBO Journal!
November 2023: Join Jörg’s talks at the '6th Warwick Quantitative Biomedicine Symposium', UK.
September 2023: We receive funding from the LMUexcellent 'Investment Fund'.
September 2023: Join Jörg’s talks at the 'EMBO Workshop Centrosomes in Development, Disease, and Evolution', Turkey.
August 2023: Welcome Johanna! Johanna joins us for her research in the realm of her Dr.med. thesis (LMU Medical Faculty).
August 2023: Meng from Kay Oliver Schink's lab (Oslo, Norway) joins us for a 2-weeks collaborative research visit.
June 2023: Congratulations to Madeleine and Janina, who have been awarded as Young Investigator Award Winner 2023 and Poster Competition Winner 2023 for their PhD project findings, respectively (10th Cardiac Regeneration & Vascular Biology Conference).
May 2023: Happy to share our latest findings on the preprint server bioRxiv, discovering the principle of adaptive pathfinding by nucleokinesis during amoeboid migration: Kroll et al, Adaptive Pathfinding by Nucleokinesis during Amoeboid Migration, bioRxiv 2023.
Dec 2023 (Janina, Johanna, and Madeleine with their awards
see Kroll et al, bioRxiv 2023
May 2023: Join Jörg’s talk at the EMBO Workshop 'Cell Polarity and Membrane Dynamics', Spain.
March 2023: Join Benjamin's talk at the interact PhD conference.
February 2023: Join Jörg’s talk at the 'Centre for Cancer Cell Reprogramming', Oslo, Norway.
January 2023: Join Janina’s, Madeleine's, and Jörg's talks at the Gordon Research Conference and Research Seminar 'Directed Cell Motility', US.
2022
December 2022: Happy to have contributed to the guideline protocol article 'Guidelines for mouse and human DC functional assays' published in the European Journal of Immunology.
November 2022: Join Jörg’s talk at CRC1348 in Münster, Germany.
November 2022: Our Lab Retreat goes to Salzburg and its Christmas Markets.
September 2022: Join Jörg’s talk at Abercrombie Cell Migration Conference in Oxford.
see Chapter 6 in 'Clausen et al, European Journal of Immunology 2022'
November 2021, Lab Retreat (Janina, Madeleine, Mauricio, Benjamin, Jörg, Kasia)
May 2022: Join Jörg’s talk at the EMBO | EMBL Symposium: Mechanobiology in Development and Disease.
May 2022: In collaboration with the Müller-Taubenberger lab, we identified that amoeboid migrating Dictyostelium positions its nucleus frontward of the centrosome - striking similarities to leukocytes! (see Ishikawa-Ankerhold, Cells 2022).
April 2022: Welcome Gamze! Gamze joins us for her master's thesis research (Faculty of Biology, LMU Munich).
April 2022: Join Jörg’s talk at the 'Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology' Würzburg, Germany.
April 2022: See the editorial by Jörg, Emmanuel Donnadieu (Université de Paris), & Hélène Moreau (Institut Curie) on the research topic "Immune Cell Migration in Health and Disease" published in Frontiers in Immunology.
March 2022: Welcome Artur! Artur joins us for his research in the realm of his Dr.dent.med thesis (LMU Medical Faculty).
March 2022: See our newest protocol manuscript "Quantifying the Probing and Selection of Microenvironmental Pores by Motile Immune Cells"published in Current Protocols.
Kroll, Ruiz-Fernandez, Braun et al, Current Protocols 2022
2021
December 2021: Our research group is part of the newly established DFG-funded Germany-wide research priority programme SPP2332 "Physics of Parasitism".
November 2021: Madeleine has been elected as one of the two doctoral representatives of the graduate programme IRTG914 (Integrated Research Training Group of the SFB914).
October 2021: See our contribution to the paper "Circadian clocks guide dendritic cells into skin lymphatics" by the Christoph Scheiermann lab published in Nature Immunology.
September 2021: Join Jörg’s talks in the realm of the International Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology ‘Life in Between - the Cell Biology of Interfaces’.
July 2021: Our Lab Retreat goes to the Bavarian Alps and the castle Neuschwanstein.
May 2021: Mauricio chairs one of the sessions of the Munich Bioimaging Day 2021.
April 2021: Welcome Bingzhi! Bingzhi joins us for a research internship during his master course (Gene Center, LMU Munich).
March 2021: Join Jörg’s talks in the realm of the Cell Migration seminar series organised by Jennifer Mitchel (Harvard) & Adam Shellard (UCL London).
March 2021: Meet Jörg & Mauricio at the EMBO | EMBL Symposium: Life at the Periphery: Mechanobiology of the Cell Surface.
January 2021: Welcome Florian! Florian joins us for his master thesis (University of Paris).
July 2021, Lab Retreat (Bingzhi, Petra, Jörg, Benjamin, Janina, Madeleine, Rifat, Mauricio)
2020
October 2020: Jörg hosts together with Hélène Moreau (Institut Curie) and Emmanuel Donnadieu (Institut Cochin) the Research Topic "Immune Cell Migration in Health and Disease' published in collaboration with Frontiers in Immunology.
August 2020: Jörg joins the EMBO Scientific Exchange Grants Advisory Board.
July 2020: See Petra’s & Jörg’s review on the ‘Principles of Leukocyte Migration Strategies’ in Trends in Cell Biology.
July 2020: Welcome Rifat! Rifat joins us for her master thesis (Faculty of Biology, LMU Munich).
June 2020: Meet Janina at the EMBO|EMBL symposium ‘Microtubules: From Atoms to Complex Systems’.
June 2020: Join Jörg’s talks in the realm of the Nucleus Science Talks series organised by Patricia Davidson & Bruno Cadot (Institute Curie).
July 2020, Lab Dinner (Mauricio, Kasia, Janina, Madeleine, Petra, Rifat, Benjamin, Jörg, Monika)
June 2020: See our contribution to the paper "Microtubules control cellular shape and coherence in amoeboid migrating cells" from the Sixt lab published in the Journal of Cell Biology (selected as 1 of 10 publications in the special JCB collection ‘The Year in Cell Biology 2020’; highlighted in the JCB Spotlight 'Microtubules keep large cells in shape' )
March 2020: Welcome Monika! Monika joins us for a research internship during her master's course (Gene Center, LMU Munich).
February 2020: Meet us at the International Cell Culture Under Flow Meeting 2020 at the Biomedical Center.
February 2020: Mauricio participates in the EMBL Course: Analysis and Integration of Transcriptome and Proteome Data at EMBL Heidelberg.
2019
October 2019: Welcome Mauricio! Mauricio joins us as a PhD student after finishing his Master of Science in Biochemistry at the Technical University Munich (TUM).
September 2019: Jörg receives the Life Science Award Austria 2019 in Basic Research from the Austrian Association of Molecular Life Sciences and Biotechnology (ÖGMBT).
September 2019: Meet us at the immunology conference 'II Joint Meeting of the German Society for Immunology (DGfl) and the Italian Society of Immunology, Clinical Immunology and Allergology (SIICA)' in Munich.
August 2019: Welcome Madeleine! Madeleine joins us as a PhD student after finishing her Master of Science in Biomedicine at the University Würzburg.
August 2019: See our meeting report - written together with Binyam Mogessie and Helen Zenner - on the newest trends in the field on how the cytoskeleton shapes the dynamics, positioning, and function of organelles.
(source: nature video; highlighting our findings in Renkawitz et al, Nature 2019; produced and narrated by Shamini Bundell)
August 2019: We receive funding from the LMUexcellent 'Junior Investigator Fund'.
July 2019: Welcome Janina! Janina joins us as a PhD student after finishing her Master of Science in Human Biology at Philipps University Marburg.
July 2019: We receive funding for some microscopy upgrades by Friedrich Baur Stiftung and by 'Verein zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Forschung an der Medizinischen Fakultät der LMU München e.V.'
June 2019: Our research group is a part of the CRC914 “Trafficking of Immune Cells in Inflammation, Development and Disease” for the next four years.
May 2019: Meet us at the conferences 'Cell Dynamics: Organelle-Cytoskeleton Interface' in Lisbon and ESCI2019 'Annual Scientific Meeting of the European Society for Clinical Investigation' in Coimbra, Portugal.
April 2019: Jörg’s paper from his time as a postdoc in Michael Sixt's lab at IST Austria has been published in Nature (PDF; see also the highlight in nature video).
Dendritic cell in a 3D collagen network (Renkawitz et al, Nature 2019; Imaged by Meghan K. Driscoll)
Lab, April 2019 (Max, Petra, Benjamin, Kasia, Jörg)
March 2019: Welcome Max! Max joins us for a research internship during his master's course (Biochemistry, Gene Center, LMU Munich).
February 2019: Welcome Benjamin! Benjamin joins us as a PhD student after having finished his Master of Science in Molecular Biotechnology at RWTH Aachen.
January 2019: Meet us during the Gordon Research Conference on Directed Cell Migration 'How Cells Integrate Biochemical Signals, Cytoskeletal Changes and Physical Forces to Guide Migration' in Galveston, US.
2018
December 2018: Our lab is associated with SFB914 Trafficking of Immune Cells in Inflammation, Development and Disease and its graduate program (Integrated Research Training Group, IRTG).
November 2018: Meet Jörg in the realm of the Biomedicum Helsinki Seminar Series.
Thanks to Kari Vaahtomeri and the Biomedicum Helsinki Research Center for hosting!
October 2018: Lab Kick-Off Renkawitz Lab
Lab Kick-Off, October 2018 (Kasia, Jörg, Petra)