Kristian Lichtenberg - London Imperial College, UK
PhD student Kristian Lichtenberg has received an exchange travel grant of 17.000 DKK for his research visit at the lab of Professor Jorge Ferrer, London Imperial College in United Kingdom.
Prof. Jorge Ferrer’s lab is a leader within the field of human and rodent developmental biology of the pancreas using both wet-lab and bioinformatics approaches. He has in recent years published great papers in high impact journals including Nature Cell Biology, Nature Genetics and Genes & Development. Kristian Lichtenberg's PhD project is focused on pancreas development and understanding the transcriptional molecular mechanisms by which Notch signaling is controlling cell fate decisions in development. Evaluating global gene expression and by doing ChIPseq. in model cell lines, explant systems and FACsorted primary cells, he has set out to find which genes are regulated by Notch signaling and finding the molecular mechanism of how Notch is regulating transcription. They want to use this knowledge in the quest for proper stem cell to beta-cell differentiation to allow regenerative treatment of diabetes patients.
The research in the Palle Serup lab, at which Kristian Lichtenberg's daily work is situated, is concentrated on pancreas development and cell signaling with a strong focus on Notch signaling. Using mouse genetics to abrogate different means of Notch signaling in specific cell types allows them to evaluate phenotypes by immunofluorescence microscopy and several other techniques. The Palle Serup lab is part of The Danish Stem Cell Center with very talented researchers within the fields of developmental biology, embryonic stem cells and cancer.
The aim of the stay is to learn new methods in bioinformatics specifically learning to use Unix, R and Python and other programmes in the analysis of ChIP‐seq and gene expression data that I have generated in the lab.