Stem cell modulation in neural development and regeneration

Organs in our body are kept alive by so-called stem cells. Stem cells are unique because they can self renew, a property that allows them to create identical copies of themselves but at the same time also generate more specialized cells that fulfil important tasks in the various organs. By doing so, they keep alive for a long time and constantly replace dying or damaged cells. In our brain and spinal chord, however, the situation is slightly different. Here, huge numbers of highly specialized nerve cells fulfil very specific tasks, sometimes activating, sometimes inhibiting the neural circuits in our central nervous system. How do the stem cells know what type of neuron to generate at which position and at what point in time? How do they change in space and time so they can create the correct types of neurons? Understanding the mechanisms that regulate neural stem cells in space and time, finding out how the stem cell state is modulated despite the need for constant self-renewal is the key goal of our SFB. Our consortium combines numerous approaches centered around a few key enabling technologies to address this problem from a variety of different angles. We employ a number of different models ranging from sea-worms all the way to human 3D cell cultures. We focus on single-cell technologies that allow us to precisely follow stem cells in space and time. Our consortium is grouped around a central bio-informatics hub that allows us to maximise the interpretation and correlation of the various datasets. Together, we intend to build a central hub for neural stem cell biology in Austria that addresses a unique unifying biological question using cutting edge technologies at the forefront of what is technologically possible.

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