Dr. Christian Berger

Christian Berger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Dr. Christian Berger
Junior Group Leader
Institute for Genetics, JGU
J.-J.-Becherweg 32, 55122 Mainz
E-mail
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Research Interests

I am interested in a variety of questions of stem cell biology: How do stem cells maintain their identity throughout development and how do they decide whether to divide or whether to become quiescent? How is growth regulated in stem cells and what are the signals controlling this? How do adult stem cells age over time and become competent to initiate tumours? The biological systems we are using to unravel mechanisms underlying these questions are the embryonic/larval neural stem cells, neuroblasts, and the adult intestinal stem cell of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

Key techniques: Immunohistochemistry, RNAseq, qPCR etc.

Research system/organism: Drosophila melanogaster 

Five Most Relevant Publications
  1. Berger C, Pallavi SK, Prasad M, Shashidhara LS and Technau GM (2005) “A critical role for Cyclin E in cell fate determination in the central nervous system of Drosophila”. Nature Cell Biology 7 (1), 56-62
  2. Berger C*, Kannan R*, Myneni S, Renner S, Shashidhara LS, Technau GM (2010)“Cell cycle independent role of Cyclin E during neural cell fate specification in Drosophila is mediated by its regulation of Prospero function.” Dev Biol 15;337(2):415-24.
  3. Kannan R*, Berger C*, Myneni S, Technau GM, Shashidhara LS (2010) “Abdominal-A mediated repression of Cyclin E expression during cell-fate specification in the Drosophila central nervous system.” Mech Dev 127(1-2):137-45.
  4. Berger C*, Harzer H*, Burkard TR, Steinmann J, van der Horst S, Laurenson A-S, Novatchkova M, Reichert H, Knoblich JK (2012) “FACS Purification and Transcriptome Analysis of Drosophila Neural Stem Cells reveals a Role for Klumpfuss in Self-Renewal.” Cell Rep. Aug 30;2(2):407-18.
  5. Harzer H*, Berger C*, Conder R, Schmauss G and Knoblich JA. (2013) “FACS purification of Drosophila larval Neuroblasts for next generation sequencing.” Nature Protocols 8, 1088-1099.
  6. Homem CCF*, Reichardt I*, Berger C, Lendl T, Knoblich JA. (2013) "Long-term live cell imaging and automated 4D analysis of Drosophila neuroblast lineages" PLOS ONE, Nov 2013 (8) 11