Science Podcast: Key To My Research

#1

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
Is Gender The Key To Health? – Prof. Dr. Birgit Derntl

Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research a podcast from the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast we explain how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives in a simple way.

My name is Jennifer, and I'm your host.

In today's episode, we get to know Professor Birgit Derntl.

Prof. Derntl:
We know more actually about the flora of the seas, we know more about erectile dysfunction, we know more of many other things than we know about women's mental health.

Host:
She is specialized in Women's Mental Health and Brain Function. Women make up about half of the world's population. But what happens to women when we ignore them in research? And what does that have to do with men's mental health? Find out now.

Prof Derntl:
I really love science on women because I am a woman. And so I guess that is also what I want to convey and what I want to tell also all of the doctoral researchers everybody I'm working with. I hope that everybody feels well the way they are in their individual way.

Host:
Individualized treatment for everyone. That is the goal of Professor Derntl's research. To achieve this, she studies the mental health of women, transgender and non-binary people. Until now, research has focused almost exclusively on the male gender.
But there are gender-specific differences.

Prof. Derntl:
The risk for certain mental disorders that women and men face. And yes, we do know that there are different prevalence rates. So the risk is way higher, for example, for a woman to be diagnosed with depression, it's twice, actually. Then for a man versus, we have different disorders like autism, which is higher in men than in women. So the risk to be diagnosed with a certain mental disorder, we know that there are sex differences. We know about these sex differences actually for decades because the data hasn't changed, and the data hasn't changed globally.

Host:
This means that scientists all over the world can see these differences in prevalence but still cannot fully explain them. But there are some hypotheses:

Prof. Derntl:
And one of them of course comes with, well, women and men may be raised differently. So the expectations for women and men are different. And then we talk probably more about gender differences. So what are the roles that women and men have to fulfill in society and how we are raised? The others are more biological theories that we have, for example, sex hormones, because women undergo, or most females actually undergo a menstrual cycle.
It's only 0.5% that has been dedicated to women's mental health of our research. So we know more actually about the flora of the seas. We know more about erectile dysfunction. We know more of many other things than we know about women's mental health. Most of the data that we have relies on male and on male animals. So that is kind of hard to infer what will happen to a woman if she takes the antidepressant or the antipsychotic or whatever medication we talk about. So we need to get together to collect data and to inform the women about their mental health and also their risks for mental health.

Host:
One of these risks is postpartum depression, which occurs a few weeks after giving birth. Studies show that about 10 to 15 percent of women develop this type of depression. Another risk is premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). This is a depressive disorder that occurs before menstruation and causes symptoms of anxiety or mood swings. The incidence is approximately 2-5 percent.
It is not only in the case of mental disorders that treatment errors can occur due to gender-specific differences. Problems can also arise from medication.
For example, there is an Alzheimer's drug called Lecanemab. It is particularly effective in white men. But not in women or black men.
These are just a few examples that confirm and drive forward Professor Derntl's work.

Prof. Derntl:
I think it's a strong indication for me to move on and to put our effort here to really kind of collaborate with everybody. But it's also something where I'm happy that we are kind of trying to fill the gap. So we are providing data right now. And we also have now an international research training group here in Tübingen, which is really a wonderful thing because now 12 doctoral researchers all work in the direction of women's mental health, contributing different data to this in collaboration with Swedish colleagues. And I think this is the future of looking at aspects together, looking into aspects and really learning from each other. And then also discuss what is needed as a next project, as a next step, and how the data that we gather translate into mental health care.

Host:
For Professor Derntl, the University of Tübingen is a good place to do research. The University Hospital has a high level of expertise and great potential when it comes to the treatment of women. It ranks fourth in the world in the field of gynecology. Professor Derntl’s research area - Women's Mental Health & Brain Function, is therefore a sensible and important addition. But she also values the work at the University Hospital in other ways:

Prof. Derntl:
It's a very nice and a wonderful atmosphere that we have here in Tübingen. And I guess one of the benefits of being such a small university town is that everybody is close by. You can actually meet with everybody, and we can exchange. And the communication and the collaboration between the colleagues is super and is really excellent. I guess that is what motivates and what gives Tübingen such a special atmosphere that we want to collaborate because we have to, it's so small and everybody's nearby. And we do then collaborate. And this is really perfect.

Host:
Professor Derntl focuses on women's mental health. This includes among other things the menstrual cycle, birth control and the menopause. There are a lot of things going on in a woman's brain that, as we have heard, are largely unexplored. What we know today is, that the hormones for the menstrual cycle affect brain activation, brain function, and also mood symptoms. But:

Prof. Derntl:
We don't know a lot about what's happening when it comes to hormonal contraception and social effective behavior, for example. So that's what I'm interested in, emotions, mood and empathy. So we did some studies in these regards. And yes, there seem to be effects there. But there's also a group of women who tolerate contraception very, very well. (...) And there is a group of women who do not tolerate it. And it's still we do not know how to identify those that tolerate it versus those who do not tolerate it before they actually start taking oral contraception or use any other hormonal contraception method.

Host:
The situation is similar concerning for the transition to menopause. Again, the data areis far too sparse.

Prof. Derntl:
We investigate the menopausal transition, the perimenopause, as it's called, as the state between, as when you transfer, actually. (...) And I mean, this period is super interesting, but again, we don't have much data. And if I now tell you that the duration of the perimenopause is four years, but it could actually be two to eight years, (...) and we don't know which individual will face a two-year transition versus who are those that actually transition for several years and even longer, and what will be the symptoms like? Because a third of the women transitioning, they won't have a lot of symptoms. They will transition and it will be all right. Third will have symptoms and they will suffer. And another third will have severe symptoms. So, this is actually also where we don't know who are the individuals who will have the less symptoms or will have more symptoms. We don't know. And of course, there are some theories that we are now working on, maybe some hormone-sensitive women, so that there's a subgroup of women who are particularly sensitive to hormonal transitions, which also shows when they start taking oral contraceptives, for example, or when they've been pregnant, so that they particularly respond to those hormonal influences. But that could also be then for the menopause transition, but we are not sure about this.

Host:
So we can see that something needs to change quickly so that all to treat all genders are treated equally.

Prof. Derntl:
If we stick to the old days, half of the population will be neglected. Half of the population will be misdiagnosed and will probably also suffer from the consequences in terms of treatment. And so that's for the women. And if we talk about trans and non-binary, I think it's the same what's happening there. There will be a group of people, a group of individuals who will not get the right treatment for their condition.

Host:
Professor Derntl is driven by the hope of individual treatment for everyone. But not only that. Her research also has a personal impact on herself.

Prof. Derntl:
I'm way more aware of monthly changes that I'm undergoing now because of all the research we are doing. And it's a wonderful topic actually to be working in. And I so much love the exchange and the openness that I have with colleagues.
I do not share here on the podcast what topics we are addressing at certain meetings, but they are very informative and very psycho-educational. So absolutely necessary to be open about this. And I guess that's a wonderful group and a wonderful group of colleagues, but also a wonderful group of doctoral researchers that we have here who really embrace the topic in all its facets and levels.

Host:
But it takes more than just a good research group. According to Professor Derntl, there are many ways to bring more attention to her field of research. Among other things, awareness campaigns and more research funding are needed:

Prof. Derntl:
And here we talk about a lot of funding. So this is not something where we have a single project, but we really need federal money to go into this and to really invest into mental health. I think if we get together and if we exchange, (...) that's really, really helpful because we may have borders, but actually women live everywhere. And if we improve healthcare for women, we also improve it for men. And that normally sells the point. And if I say, well, it is of relevance to half of the population, but actually it's of relevance for the whole population, because if you can think of a tailored treatment for women, then you can also say, well, then there must also be a tailored treatment for men, right? Because if the one group is served individually, the others will as well because we have tested it then. So I guess that's also where we could speed up is saying, everybody is concerned. So let's get together and do something.

Host:
This was: Key To My Research, a podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes. There you can also find a link to the whole interview with professor Derntl. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends.

Authors: Chris Veit and Joti Fotiadis.
Special thanks to: Professor Birgit Derntl, Laura Rothgang, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

#2

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
Can Plants Beat Climate Stress? – Prof. Dr. Eric Kemen

Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer, and I’m your host.   

In todays episode, we will get to know Professor Eric Kemen.


Prof. Kemen:
Our main goal in general is to figure out what does it mean for a plant to become robust.

Host:
He researches Microbial Interactions in Plant Ecosystems at the Interfaculty Institute of Microbiology and Infection Medicine in Tübingen. And he is researching Microbial Interactions in Plant Ecosystems.

Here is an example:   
Prolonged periods of drought or flooding cause entire harvests to fail because our crops cannot survive them. But nature quickly turns green again after such extreme conditions. Why is that?

Prof. Kemen:
Key to my research is for sure to understand from an ecological point of view where plants are growing, how they are growing, what are the environmental factors, and to go down from these ecological aspects to the individual genes and how they function.
So that is also what motivates me all the time to do my work. It's really that the way of understanding how on the really small scale we can understand how this basically translates later on in an ecological or agricultural context.

Host:
Before becoming a professor, Eric Kemen would have liked to have worked in agriculture and become a farmer.

Prof. Kemen:
I would have probably become a more organic farming person. So I was always interested in alternative farming, so where you basically don't use a lot of agrochemicals, but where you basically use more the natural resources that exist in order to build up your farm. So that would have been my idea. But of course it's not easy if you don't come from a farm to become a farmer and to get land to do this, actually. So this then had to be an idea and stayed very theoretical.

Host:
Perhaps as theoretical as his research is today. Professor Kemen and his team are doing basic research. Their goal is to be able to apply their science to agriculture one day. But for now, it remains at a theoretical level.

Prof. Kemen:
Our main goal in general is to figure out what does it mean for a plant to become robust. So what does it mean if you stand out there, and you suddenly have sun that burns down like hell and basically their temperature increases to 60 degrees because the ground gets hot to 70 degrees and the plant has to stay. And then during the night it suddenly drops or in winter it drops really below zero and so on. But still the plant basically stays, and we have not really a good idea what this robustness is and how we can basically change it or adapt it.

Host:
The big question is, how do we get back the resilience of wild plants while maintaining the yield of our agricultural crops?

Prof. Kemen:
One has to be aware that we have to feed more and more people on the earth. So basically we cannot really risk that we are producing less. So we really have to see that we get this plant robust by learning something from the nature. 

It's very difficult to really breed in all these genes with classical breeding in the real time that we need with these genes because we are already seeing that we have very harsh conditions for our plants that I mean most people have really faced already this year and will face also during the summer really extreme temperature, extreme hot, extreme water. And of course there the plants need to adapt, and we need to find a way how to really get this to the agriculture very quickly.

Host:
What Professor Kemen means is that it is much easier to work with so-called transgenes or genetically modified plants. The use of genetic engineering in agriculture is controversial. The German Environment Ministry warns of herbicide resistance. Professor Kemen understands the criticism. He says that if the manipulation is done in a safe environment, just by introducing specific genes into the plant, it can help achieve faster results and be more resilient in the face of climate change.  According to Professor Kemen, time is running.

Prof. Kemen:
I think it's the timeline within the next 10 years that we really have to find what makes the plants robust. So what makes them really survive in nature. And then we have to get this as quickly as possible into the crops that they become really robust.

Host:
That is why the University of Tübingen is the right place. Professor Kemen says it is the perfect combination of disciplines that makes this university so unique.

Prof. Kemen:
Here the plant research is really a focus. So there we are in one big institute where we are only looking at plant research. And we also are associated with ecology, for example, that also has a big part looking into plant. And this is really a center for plant science. And of course, this is a big advantage if you have colleagues nearby that all work on plants and all different aspects. And this is, I think, one of the unique sites where you have such a focus that so many groups work with the same interest on the same topic. And for me, it was also interesting to come here and very important because it's not only plant sciences, but we also have a very strong microbiology. And within this microbiology, the microbiome is one of the hot topics and the main topics they are focusing on. And as I'm part also of the microbiology, this is making the perfect environment where one can study on one side the plant, one can study the micro, and one can really bring this together with the ecology to study how plants interact with their environment to really survive these harsh conditions.

Host:
And for Professor Kemen, this little town has a lot more to offer than that.

Prof. Kemen:
What I really like about Tübingen is that first of all, it's an extremely international city. So it's a very small city. And usually small cities in Germany are not so international, but Tübingen is completely different. And for me personally, I think what is important is that it's really embedded in natural reserve, like the Schönbuch, which is a huge forest area, which is really natural. And it's really fantastic to go out there and spend days because you can just walk from Tübingen outside, and you can walk for hours and hours and hours just through nature.

Host:
Professor Kemen enjoys sharing this experience with his family. Together they enjoy going into the woods and observing what he calls spectacular nature.

Prof. Kemen:
I don't know if that is of a scientist, but we are the whole family, my kids and my wife, we are very much interested in plants in general. So we are very fascinated by the diversity that is out there. And of course, we want to know which plants are there if we don't know them and try to identify them together. And of course, we are also, since I'm also into microbiology, we are very fascinated by the diseases the plants have. This might sound a bit strange, but there's such a diversity of microbes. You can basically see if you look closer at the plant. So they are, for example, rust fungi, and they make fantastic structures where they release their spores in the environment. And you can see them on the plant. They are very colorful. So there are orange spores, red spores, brown spores, and so on. And this we as a family like very much also to look into those pathogens. Of course, what you find always are a lot of mildew that are outside there. And just seeing by a naked eye how fantastic the diversity is that is out there. And the fantastic thing is also you have all these pathogens there. The plants are still all very healthy. So, and that is, of course, fascinating looking out there in nature. And of course, what we usually have with us is a small pocket microscope. So we usually also try to look closer into insects and whatever we see there, and how the structure also look on the microscopical level to get an idea of what we really find out because these are just fantastic structures. If you look in the microscope and it's so fascinating what nature is generating there.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a Podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes below. There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Kemen. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends and colleagues.


Authors: Chris Veit and, Joti Fotiadis. 
Special thanks to: Professor Eric Kemen, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald. 

 My name is Jennifer and I’m your host. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

#3

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
How Does AI Effect Our Everday Lifes? – Prof. Dr. Christoph Bareither


Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer, and I am your host.

In today’s episode, we get to know Professor Christoph Bareither.

Prof. Bareither:
What we are trying to do, is to contribute to a future in which we make better decisions about how to live together with artificial intelligence.

Host:
He is a professor for cultural anthropology with a focus on digital anthropology at the University of Tübingen and the director of Ludwig-Uhland-Institute for empirical cultural studies. His research and teaching focuses on the ethnographic study of everyday digital cultures. His work aims to contribute to urgent sociopolitical debates by highlighting how digital technologies transform everyday practices and experiences.

Prof. Bareither:
My research in a nutshell is trying to find out how people use digital technologies to shape and live their everyday lives, but also how these technologies come in with their own affordances and their own agency to shape these everyday lives in return. And we are trying to look at both things at once to create basic knowledge which we can use to better understand our digital societies.

Host:
Let's look at specific topics.
Professor Bareither and his team are working on:
• the transformation of everyday culture through artificial intelligence,
cultures of memory,
• cultural heritage and museums,
• as well as social media and digital image cultures.

One of the projects Professor Bareither is focusing on is the use of generative AI at the university.

Prof. Bareither:
What do students and researchers actually do with AI right now? How do they use it? And how does it change the way they create and work with knowledge? And this is what we call hybrid epistemic practices. So epistemic practices, basically knowledge practices that are hybrid in the sense that humans and AI systems come together to create and shape knowledge or learn about it and so on.

But the interesting thing was that there is really not a lot of research, especially qualitative and ethnographic research on what actually happens on the ground.

Host:
That's why Professor Bareither and his team are now conducting ethnographic research to find out how people use Generative AI. To get an overview, they started with a survey of around 500 people at the University of Tübingen.

Prof. Bareither:
So the big fear at the University was, oh god, now all the students will write all their assignments with generative AI, researchers will just create articles with generative AI and so on. And our survey finding was that's actually the least frequent thing.

Host:
Here are some examples of what most participants to the small survey said they were using generative AI for:
• as an alternative to google,
• as a help for brainstorming,
• as a source of inspiration,
• to discover new ideas
• or to help overcome writer’s block.

Prof. Bareither:
It's also interesting, of course, there were critical reflections of how AI shapes our everyday life at the university, It's this problem of a potentially uncritical adaption of AI-generated output. And this question of temptation, right? It's so easy to use, and it's actually not good and most students see it's not, the results are not so great if you use it to generate text, but it has this temptation, especially when the pressure is on, and you have to deliver and so on that people are tempted to use it anyway. And this temptation is now there, it's in the room, right? And so people struggle with that. And we just started, as I said, but we want to explore these, and we will also feed them back into the university. I'm also part of a working group that is responsible for developing basically the politics of the university and ideas and guidelines for teaching and research and so on. And we are feeding these insights also back into this working group and not only, but also of course into the research area on AI and science.

Host:
Professor Bareither and his team are now conducting in-depth interviews with a range of people. The goal is to really dig into this issue and explore how Generative AI is changing the way people study and work at the University of Tübingen.

Another important area of research in Professor Bareither's field is called: Curating Digital Images. Here, he and his team are trying to understand how the impact of social media affects how teenagers and adolescents perceive images of the human body. According to Professor Bareither's research, about 60 percent of teenagers and adolescents in Germany use Instagram or TikTok several times a week.


Prof. Bareither:
What they see is structured by recommender algorithms. And recommender algorithms today are mostly based on AI systems, right? And these are black boxes, so we don't exactly know how they work. The companies try to be more transparent about it, but you only get like bits and pieces of information about how they work. And we know they have quite a big impact. So what we look at in this project specifically is normative beauty standards. So how bodies are stereotypically represented in a lot of social media posts, and then the question, what will algorithms and recommender algorithms play in reproducing these bodily stereotypes, you know, these typical norms of beauty?

Host:
To achieve this, Professor Bareither and his team are combining modern and traditional methods.

Prof. Bareither:
We have basically young people who use social media so-and-so many hours a week, and then they create field nodes and diaries that we then use for our analysis combined with interviews with them to better understand how it is for them to live on, you know, everyday lives with these platforms and with their algorithms that present a certain kind of body image to them on a daily basis.

Host:
Understanding what happens to us when we use social media is the goal of this type of research.

Prof. Bareither:
So what we are trying to study is how people perceive bodily beauty through these social media feeds, and how this shapes how they experience bodies of other people on Instagram and offline, and also their own bodies. How does that shape the way they perceive bodily beauty and body beauty standards?

Host:
While there is a big question mark over how exactly the algorithms of major social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram work, Professor Bareither does know the following:

Prof. Bareither:
What we know is that both platforms collect what they call signals from users. These could be, you know, something you like or some an account you follow and so on, but it would also, especially on TikTok, be simply how long you look at a particular video, right? And it already records the length, and then it uses it basically to create a profile of what you like, right? And what it does then is at least TikTok, that is how it's TikTok CEO once explained it, is to use AI based pattern recognition process, which basically means the way he explains it is, okay, we know that person A likes one, two, three, and we know a person B that likes one, two, three, and four. So we figure four is also likeable for person A. So what this AI based system does, it actually creates a network of taste, a network of aesthetic preferences, right? And uses this network. So it basically incorporates the tastes of all people using the platform and builds aesthetic relationships and taste relationships between them to figure out what someone likes and then uses this to provide someone else what this person potentially likes.

Host:
So people are getting content that they didn't even know they liked. And it seems to work really well. That is one of the reasons why TikTok is so popular right now. With all his research, Professor Bareither has a noble goal.

Prof. Bareither:
What we are trying to do, my teams and I, is to contribute in a nutshell to a future in which we make better decisions about how to live together with artificial intelligence.

Host:
And for Professor Bareither, there is no better place to do his research, than Tübingen. For example, there is the so-called Cyber Valley. Europe's largest research consortium in the field of artificial intelligence. The institute where Professor Bareither works is called the Ludwig Uhland Institute.

Prof. Bareither:
Well, our Institute is special in several ways. It has a very difficult history that's connected to national socialism, but it was also since the 1960s, a very extremely progressive Institute participated in the building up of culture and apology in Germany and played quite a significant role. So it has a very interesting and complex history, and it's a small department now with three professorships, but a really good one, I think. And we have different areas of expertise. And what makes this Institute special is that we all share a lot of responsibilities, but also research interests. And we have several projects where we collaborate, where we closely work together. And this is the same for teaching, that we really try and work together to create interesting teaching programs for students. And then also the place, of course, we are on the castle in Tübingen. So everyone is welcome to visit us someday. If you go into the castle, and you walk up the stairs, then you see like a little house, and it really looks like out of a Grimm's fairy tale, you know. But if you go in, it's actually not a house, it's a tower, and it goes down into the castle with our own library and interesting furniture, which has to do with its history. But come and see for yourself.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a Podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes. There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Bareither. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends.

Authors: Chris Veit and, Joti Fotiadis.
Special thanks to: Professor Christoph Bareither, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.

My name is Jennifer and I’m your host. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

#4

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
How Smart are Tumors? - Prof. Dr. Dr. Ghazaleh Tabatabai


Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research - the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen.

In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer, I’m your host and in today's episode we meet Professor Ghazaleh Tabatabai.

Prof. Tabatabai:
We deal with tumor diseases that have learned to escape from therapy.

Host:
She is a Professor of Neurology and Neuro-Oncology at the University of Tübingen.
And she is the Chair of the Department of Neurology and Interdiscipinary Neuro-Oncology at the University Hospital Tübingen. Her research work focuses on brain tumors.

Prof. Tabatabai:
The key to my research is contributing as much as we can in our team to push boundaries. We want to improve therapeutic strategies for patients with brain tumors. And what we want to find out by our research is whether there are any specific vulnerabilities that these tumors have at certain stage of the development or during therapy that we can exploit again therapeutically to design combination therapies.

Host:
All of this is done in clinical as well as wet lab projects.
A wet lab, or an experimental lab, is a laboraty designed to work with experimental methods from molecular biology using for example cell culture and other experimental models.

Prof. Tabatabai:
We deal with tumor diseases that have learned to escape from therapy. So whatever therapy you apply, somehow these tumor cells are smart enough to find a way to survive anyway. But there is a certain window of opportunity where they have not yet found this escape route. And we really want to define where is this window of opportunity and how to exploit that and what really shapes this window of opportunity.

Host:
One of the most recent projects that Professor Tabatabai has been working on is:

Prof. Tabatabai:
We have a glioma model where we know that specific pathways contribute to the disease. Or you know that during treatment, specific pathways are involved. Then we go ahead and apply this treatment and then watch how these tumor cells change during this treatment. This is something that we do using functional genomics. So we have a specific workflow that we established in our lab to dynamically watch how these tumor cells change during this application of specific therapies.

Host:
As director, Professor Tabatabai has to keep track of the research in her field. What makes the work at the University Hospital in Tübingen so unique: it hosts the only oncological cluster of excellence in Germany, IFIT: which stands for Image-guided and Functionally Instructed Tumor Therapies.

Prof. Tabatabai:
For iFIT, the main feature is here to really combine world-class expertise from three different research areas to create synergy and then basically catalyze different research projects that address relevant questions.

Host:
These three research areas would be:
A: Functional Target Identification and Molecular Tumor Therapies
B: Immunotherapies, and
C: Molecular and functional multiparametric imaging

Prof. Tabatabai:
And if you now look at a circle covering area A, B and C you have the unique vision of having molecular therapies plus immunotherapies plus a method to visualize all the relevant molecular events. And we see in all the projects that had been conducted in the first funding period so far that actually really the synergy of these three areas this is the key to really push that forward and this is something that is absolutely unique to the University of Tübingen because having synergies in all these three areas is required and this is something that we can really work on here, and we can really design these projects with all these different principal investigators that are involved in iFIT.

Host:
Neurologist, physician-scientist and director. Today, Professor Tabatabai benefits from all the expertise she gained during her education and training. What has guided her along the way, and what she would like to share with young students at the beginning of their careers:

Prof. Tabatabai:
A certain way of self-management, a certain way of discipline, or really having the right mindset or attitude in a specific situation. Of course, this is nothing that you are born with. It's a muscle that you need to train and train and train again. And there is no universal recipe to it, right? If you're only in rooms where you feel you are the smartest in the room, you are definitely in the wrong rooms, in my opinion. So you have to go out of your comfort zone, and you have to look for new topics and also new areas of growth.

Host:
For Professor Tabatabai, growth remains an important part of her work. And the iFIT cluster is the perfect place to do that.

Prof. Tabatabai:
This principle of, you know, if you are the smartest in the room, then you are in the wrong room in the cluster initiative. You definitely, and if you are in the right cluster, right, you definitely, you are never the smartest in the room because whenever, I mean, if you think of three different research areas, you cannot be a world expert in all of these, right? So it's per definition that you always see, okay, so this, I didn't even know, or this, I don't even understand. So there are sometimes also scenarios where you, in the beginning, think, what is this? And then you go after it and then learn about it, and then you study and also, as you say, so really fall in line with these principles.

Host:
As mentioned earlier, Tübingen plays an important role for Professor Tabatabai because of the unique cluster at the University Hospital. But there is more to Tübingen than that.

Prof. Tabatabai:
I think what helps is that Tübingen as a city is, of course, quite small. So every, its distances are so short, it makes, of course, also the private life much easier. So my daughter is just 10 minutes going from home to school, right? And it's not like having a 50-minute drive somewhere. And also for going to colleagues at different institutes, you can just walk, right? And meet. And I think this is also a very unique feature that it's fantastic. Yeah, and I could not right now imagine really that there are a lot of other places that combine on one hand, you know, the specific topics that I'm passionate about in my research, and this would be on neuroscience and oncology. These are at a very high level in Tübingen and, of course, the clusters. And in addition, this working culture. I think this makes this place very unique.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes.

There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Tabatabai.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends & collegues.

Authors: Chris Veit and, Joti Fotiadis.

Special thanks to: Professor Ghazaleh Tabatabai, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.

My name is Jennifer and I’m your host. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

#5

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
Do Objects Party Alone? – Prof. Dr. Dorothee Kimmich


Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research - the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen.
In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer, I’m your host and in today's episode we meet Professor Dorothee Kimmich.

Prof. Kimmich:
People feel more and more invaded by objects and things become more and more dangerous also.

Host:
She is a Professor for Literary cultural studies and cultural theory in the German department of the University of Tübingen. And she focuses on the meaning of things in literature and the concept of similarities.

Stay tuned to learn about the significance of things in modern and postmodern literature and why they are more important than you might think.

Prof. Kimmich:
You have lots of novels or short stories where adults and not children are confronted with objects that talk, that run around, and they want to live with you. There's a very nice short story about an Austrian author, and he tells, "Every time I come home I knock a little bit on my door to tell the objects and the things in the room that they can go back to their places where I put them when I left my home so that I'm not too scared and everything is in order. But I do know that when I'm absent all these kinds of objects have fun, and they play around.” So he's telling about how he's convinced that objects have a certain kind of life.

Host:
According to Professor Kimmich, there can be several reasons for this phenomenon. One of them is the meaning that things take on when we spend time with them or live with them.

Prof. Kimmich:
When I'm talking about conviviality, do I think about only human beings or also animals, plants, things? And how are things part of the little cosmos I'm living in? Do I use them only or do I accept that there is something I have to take care for?

Host:
What Professor Kimmich means is that for us humans, things are special in many ways. This becomes clearer when we look at art and literature. But why is this so? And how did Professor Kimmich come up with these ideas? To understand this, we have to go back to the 80s. Kimmich began her studies in Tübingen and then went to Paris for about a year where she had world-famous teachers like the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

Prof. Kimmich:
I came from Tübingen and the first two weeks I had to change my clothes, the whole habit. I started smoking because this was very important. In the 80s there were Foucault still in Paris and giving lectures. And we could attend all kinds of super lectures with Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault. And this was kind of a turning point in my study career but also in the style I would say, in the style of thinking. And when I came back to Tübingen, it was quite difficult to re-adapt to not only a small town but also different kinds of discussions and thinking.

Host:
After Professor Kimmich returned from Paris, she also realized that things seem to play a big role in modern literature. And there are several reasons why this surprised her:

Prof. Kimmich:
At the first glance you would say: "That has no room in modern literature!” Because we know that things are material and material is dead. So this is the definition. And if you are a person who believes in living material, maybe you are esoteric or a little bit crazy even a child.

Host:
Professor Kimmich’s research lies inbetween literature and philosophy. She says that her niche of thinking and teaching touches history, philosophy and all kinds of arts. And she finds it all in literature.

Prof. Kimmich:
I think it's the only “zone”, you might call it, where you can recognize or even feel how deep art and literature is, how deep it is part of our everyday life and our narrations, our discourses, our habits and our behavior. Because it's part of our history, our biography and the kind of thinking we would develop. And this is: How do you want to live? Normally you don't think that you need art to do that, and you don't think that you need philosophy. But if you combine it with history and philosophy and art you know this is the ambit you are living in.

Host:
A key factor for Professor Kimmich in this context is the power of imagination. As we have heard, this is something that children are usually good at. They actually believe in the realness of things. But also for adults, the power of imagination is something that may have brought us to where we are today.

Prof. Kimmich:
If you have no imagination, you can't survive. And it's the imaginary you live from, and you live for. And the imaginary is nourished by also memory and what you remember. And it's even in the brain it's quite near. The neurophysiologist that tells us that is kind of a capacity which combines the capacity to remember and memory. And you need to have imagination to have plans, to make plans, to decide. And if you have no imagination, you can't solve any problem.

Host:
In postmodern literature, the meaning of things changes.

Prof. Kimmich:
People feel more and more invaded by objects and things really. And the objects become more and more dangerous also. They are many, and they have become dangerous, and it's more difficult to be a friend of the objects you live with. And in modern literature this is kind of - to make it a little bit more theoretical - more interesting. Maybe it's contesting the divide between nature and culture and between the material and the non-material or the spirit and the material or the living and the dead. So, you would say human beings and even animals are living beings whereas all these kinds of things are dead material. And the divide between the dead and the living and the material and the spirit and nature and culture, these big divides what we invented more or less in the 19th or even starting in the 18th century is now contested. And not only contested by philosophy that comes much later only at the end of the 20th century, but it's contested by literature that you should rethink these kinds of categories and also this kind of ordering the world.

Host:
Let's go back from the theoretical approach to modern and postmodern literature x to the methods that Professor Kimmich and her team use for their research. It's very different from what scientists in biology, medicine, or even archaeology do.

Prof. Kimmich:
People in the humanities, my colleagues and I, we mostly work alone at home.
We have to exchange ideas and perspectives, theories and methods and to discuss the approaches, and we can also give hints but at the end, the reading and writing, we do it very alone.

Host:
There are many things, that Professor Kimmich appreciates about the University of Tübingen. One of them is:

Prof. Kimmich:
First, Tübingen is an interesting university because we have many many many many disciplines. We have specialists for Chinese culture and history, for Japanese history, we have this wonderful anthropologist department, we have a big history department, and we have many many other languages and cultures and many different kinds of historical departments or historical research, not of all parts of the world but all times of the world. And so we are very close to each other because Tübingen is so small, and you have many opportunities to work together and there is something, also what is quite, also I think an exception, that even with departments like the natural sciences or also medicine are also interested in our research, and we can talk to each other and cooperation is possible and this is a big chance here in Tübingen.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes.

There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Kimmich.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends.

Authors: Chris Veit and Joti Fotiadis.

Special thanks to: Professor Dorothee Kimmich, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.

My name is Jennifer, Thanks for listening and see you next time.

#6

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
Did Art Save Homo Sapiens? – Prof. Dr. Nicholas Conard


Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast, we explain how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives in a simple way.
My name is Jennifer, and I’m your host.
In today's episode we meet Professor Nicholas Conard.

Prof. Conard:
If you are going to be an archaeologist, you have to put in the work. And if you are smart about doing the work, the reward will come.

Host:
He is the Director of the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology and the founding Director of the Institute of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Tübingen. And he is a specialist in the study of Paleolithic archaeology.

Prof. Conard:
Every group of human beings we know today, well, they have speech, they have song, they have dance, they have music, they tell stories, and they have art. So, these characteristics that we can identify 40,000 years ago are universal.

I'm very much of a field archaeologist, and there are plenty of projects where, where it's difficult, I remember once my daughter came with me to South Africa, we had to go across a river, climb a cliff, and do these things that were, I don't want to say, extremely dangerous, but a little bit dangerous, and she said, "Wow, I didn't know you'd do something such as I can. This is how you get to the site." And I can think of many, many sites where just getting there is very difficult.

Host:
Professor Conard's field of research is diverse. It includes various Stone Age epochs, the development, and spread of modern humanity, environmental reconstruction, the settlement history of western Eurasia and Southern Africa, and the origins of agriculture and sedentism.

The goal of his research is to create a new framework for the study of human origins to replace the current fragmentary study of fossils and archaeological finds. But one epoch in particular is very important to Conard.

Prof. Conard:
Almost all of human history has been in the Paleolithic, and that's a period where humans lived through hunting and gathering, and collecting all sorts of foods, fishing, many other things, but without any real systematic agriculture, in most cases without serious storage for long periods of time, and people did live primarily on what they were personally able to collect or kill, process and eat themselves, and I would say today we're so removed from all of that, right? We just go to the store, we go to the market and tubing or wherever we are, and most of us don't do any serious agricultural work. Most of us don't have that much to do with the fish or animals or any of the products we have, and so we're just consumers, and for almost all of human history, people are much more engaged with subsistence and all of the technology you need to do that. We're things that most people could do, and that's what shapes who we are anatomically, mentally, and what most people consider normal today is really highly abnormal when we consider human history.

Host:
So when it comes to understanding early modern humans, Professor Conard takes a rather unconventional approach.

Prof. Conard:
I feel very close to these people, through all the stages. I'm not saying that I've got all the answers, and certainly I would learn a lot by being able to go back and see how, let's say, Homo erectus, Homo Heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthal, societies interacted with one another, and to what extent, for instance, fully developed communication about the past, present, future. If there were, for instance, artistic expression, song, dance, things like this before modern humans, things like that, I could probably figure out just by participant observation using cultural and anthropological terms and keeping my eyes open. That would be super interesting.

Host:
Professor Conard doesn't like to generalize modern humans or early modern humans. But in some ways, our world today is very different from the world twenty to forty thousand years ago.

Prof. Conard:
The modern world is characterized by everybody's in a big hurry. Everybody's got appointments, time is money, everybody's stressed out about everything. Back then, I really don't think it was like that. I think there was a lot of time just to engage with the world around you, the people around you. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there were times where things got rough. You could also have complex social interaction and many other things, but in general, this hectic life that we have today would be very different.

Host:
Perhaps this preoccupation led to early art such as Professor Conard found in the Swabian Alps. At the Hohlefels site, he found a six-centimeter figure that is about forty thousand years old.

Prof. Conard:
It's about 10,000 years older than any other figurine of this kind. It's from the Org nation period, the first period of modern humans and are part of Germany and southwestern Germany along the upper Danube. Furthermore, it was found at the base of the Org nation layer, would have an age of approximately 40,000 years. What's also fascinating is the left shoulder and arm are missing and just 70 centimeters from where we found most of the figurine, we were looking for the left shoulder and arm and the most complete flute made of a Griffin Vulture radius, a wing bone came out right next to it. That's like, "Oh my God." These are all things that were pretty much considered close to unimaginable. Female figurines typically come from the next period quite a bit later called the Armenian, which might be somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 years, depending on where you are.

Host:
So what is it that people have found so fascinating about the creation of art? For Professor Conard, it has to do with spiritual or early religious rituals.

Prof. Conard:
I personally would say any modern human, whether it's 40,000 years ago or today, especially in a hunter-gathering environment, definitely had religious beliefs, myths, an ideology, a way of looking at the world. I think that is very, very close to universal. I don't think there were many atheists, right? But some people wouldn't accept the religions of hunter-gatherers as even being formal religions. I personally would. When it comes to art, I think art's a very fluid term. I think in our own lives it is. And I personally don't feel any need to put it in a small box and say, "This is art and this isn't art." More importantly, in my own field, all of these kinds of depictions, what we see in Grotchevais, Lascaux, and many other sites, we call that in my field art. And no one would question that the focal-haired figurines are art. And for us, that's true.

Host:
Professor Conard also suggests linking early art to Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest.

Prof. Conard:
Every group of human beings we know today, well, they have speech, they have song, they have dance, they have music, they tell stories, and they have art. So, these characteristics that we can identify 40,000 years ago are universal, which suggests very strongly that people who have these capabilities made it and the people who didn't, did not make it. Otherwise, we obviously wouldn't be on podcasts because none of that stuff would exist, right? So, there must have been an advantage in terms of survival, fitness, reproduction, in comparison to the hominins who didn't have it. And Neanderthals, Denisovans, Flores, people, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, these are all groups that had very little, or there was very little evidence of symbolic artifacts.

Host:
To really dive into this kind of research, Professor Conard needs a good environment. And for him, the University of Tübingen is the best place to do his research.

Prof. Conard:
I live in the old city; I walk up the hill to the castle every day. And literally every single day when I walk to work, which is really just a few hundred meters, I look over the Neckar to the Swabian Jura and I think: This is breathtakingly beautiful. And one reason I?m very productive is, that I just loose no time. I just walk to work, on my way home I go shopping, and everything is so easy today. You know, and all of these things are just so easy. Coming here on my bike just takes really just a few minutes and thats typical of everything I do. And I notice, when I go away, even to fabulous academic institutes, my work environment always gets worse. And so, speeking from myself, there?s no better place that I could be for my field and I had occasions, I have job offers from elsewhere, but I never even considered it.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes. There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Conard. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends.

Authors: Chris Veit and, Joti Fotiadis.

Special thanks to: Professor Nicholas Conard, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.

My name is Jennifer and I’m your host. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

#7

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
Can We Reprogram Life? - Prof. Dr. Hannes Link


Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research, the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer; I’m your host, and in today’s episode, we get to know Professor Hannes Link.

Prof. Link:
We can also address climate change by reprogramming bacteria, for example, such that they fixate CO2.

Host:
Hannes Link is a professor for microbiology and bacterial metabolomics at the University of Tübingen. And he is an expert when it comes to the metabolism of bacteria.

Prof. Link:
The key to my research is to stay motivated, that I have questions that I think are interesting enough, that I spend a lot of time thinking about them, and then I can develop, again, interesting ideas. And then maybe the key is just to select the right idea out of these many ideas that you have.

Host:
Professor Links' passion for DNA and bacteria began early on, while he was still a student.

Prof. Link:
One key moment was during my studies when I learned about how DNA is translated to RNA and how this is translated to protein. So how the genetic code is read and how this genetic code somehow emerges from the genetic code. This was really fascinating. I was actually a bit angry that I never learned this at school. So this is really a key moment that motivated me to work on that topic, how DNA encodes all the functions for life.

Host:
Today, Professor Link is trying to really understand the metabolism of bacteria. He and his teams focus on three main areas. Before we dive into these three areas, let's try to understand why metabolism is so important.

Prof. Link:
If you understand metabolism, then you immediately have a wide range of applications. And this could be microbiomes, where we investigate metabolism in the microbiome, or metabolism-antibiotic interaction, or synthetic biology, where we try to reprogram metabolism. And our role—often these are collaborations—is really to investigate metabolism and to modify metabolism.

Host:
So this is why metabolism is so important for Professor Link and his teams.
But before one can understand the metabolism of bacteria, one has to understand the bacterium itself. And this is fascinating, because bacteria are in some ways very simple and at the same time very complex.

Prof. Link:
Bacteria, in order to grow, have to produce building blocks, and out of these building blocks, they produce then all the components that they need to build a new bacterial cell. And bacteria can do something special. This is something we humans cannot do. They can make these building blocks from very simple nutrients. They can take a simple sugar molecule or something even simpler, something like CO2, and out of these simple molecules, they build all the building blocks they need to grow. Sometimes I use the analogy of a factory, like a car factory, but here the factory is building a bacterial cell. So this is the end product. And this factory starts with a simple starting material, like sugar or something like CO2. And then there are hundreds of individual steps. And in these steps, the cell is building a new bacterial cell as the final end product. And the nice thing is we know each of these individual steps very well. We know what they're doing and where they are in this bacterial factory. But what we don't know is how this is controlled and how all of this functions together.

Host:
And that is what Professor Link and his teams are trying to find out in their three main areas of research.
One of them, as he mentioned, is the microbiome. The microbiome is becoming more and more important. And microbiomes can be found in our bodies, but also in plants, as you may have heard in one of our previous episodes with Professor Kemen. One of the best-known microbiomes is in our guts. But Professor Link and his teams are taking a closer look at another microbiome.

Prof. Link:
We started now with the nasal microbiome. So in Tübingen, I have many colleagues working on microbiomes. Lisa Maier works on the gut microbiome. And this is all very interesting. But since we're working with E. coli and already know how complex a single bacterium can be, it was a bit daunting to me. Now suddenly you don't have a single bacterial factory, but you have many of them, and they're interacting. That's why we decided for the nasal microbiome. So it's a little smaller microbiome, but where so many bacteria live together. So we started now analyzing the nasal microbiome. And again, we're focusing on metabolism. We are asking what happens now if a bacterium doesn't work in isolation. So this metabolic factory is not alone. It has now 10 other bacteria. And all we see at the moment is that they're highly interacting. So these factories kind of work together. They share some nutrients and maybe also develop some new functions.

Host:
The microbiome, like the one found in our guts, can be influenced by what we eat. It can also change over time. But the nasal microbiome is different.

Prof. Link:
You don't have so much ways to modulate the nasal microbiome. And this is, for example, something we would like to find out. How can we remove a major pathogen from the nose? So one-third of humans, they have Staph aureus in the nose. This is this pathogen, MRSA, which causes a lot of problems in the clinic. And often, if you go to the clinic, you get a cream which you can smear into the nose that Staph aureus is removed from the nose. And there we would like to find out alternative therapies or alternative ways of somehow to modulate the nasal microbiome such that Staph aureus can be removed. And one way could be, for example, probiotics that you just put another bacterial smear into your nose, and then you have a more healthy nasal microbiome.

Host:
Professor Link's second area of focus comprises metabolism and antibiotic interaction.

Prof. Link:
So we're investigating antibiotics. So how do antibiotics work and how do antibiotics kill bacteria? Because an antibiotic in the first place it just inhibits the bacterial growth. So the bacterium cannot grow anymore. But what we actually want is that the bacterium dies, that it really disappears from our body. And they were investigating a little bit the mechanism that lead to bacterial cell death. And there we learned a little bit that it seems that metabolism plays an important role because if bacteria find a way to slow down their metabolism, then they can somehow prevent that they die from an antibiotic. And this can be dangerous in the clinic, or if you have an infection, if you get an antibiotic you take it for several days, the bacteria will not grow. But then, actually once you remove the antibiotic from your body, then they can grow again because they not died. So you really have to clear the bacteria or the pathogens from your body. And this is why we would like to find out how can we improve this killing? For example, is there a certain diet that you could take with an antibiotic such that the antibiotic is more effective?

Host:
Before we look at the third main area of research, Synthetic Biology, we need to understand the methods used to do the research. A very important method is CRISPR. This is a protein that allows scientists to actually cut DNA. And this has changed a lot, especially in biology.

Prof. Link:
CRISPR, this is called endonuclease, it's a protein, Cas9, for example. And this protein can cut DNA, and it can cut DNA precisely at the position where I can program it. So it's a programmable scissors. So I can cut the DNA exactly at the point where I like to do this. And at this point, I can then insert a new gene or a mutation, or I can delete something. So it really allows us now to reprogram the genetic code of a cell.

Host:
Now let's focus on synthetic biology, or genetic engineering. This is Professor Link's third main area of research. But in order to do synthetic biology, you first need what is called systems biology.

Prof. Link:
In systems biology, we try to understand how these bacteria are working. So there we try to understand how are the molecular components inside the bacteria, how they're interacting, and which networks emerge from these interactions. Often it's very messy, these are very complex networks. But these networks really allow the cell to self-organize, to self-repair, and to function in a way how they do. So this is a task of systems biology, that we map out these networks, that we understand how they function in these networks. Then we can use this understanding for synthetic biology. And synthetic biology is really all about genetic engineering, about writing the genetic code or coding with DNA.

So synthetic biology has many applications, really, of high-range. We all know the mRNA vaccines that we use now for the coronaviruses. But we can also address climate change by reprogramming bacteria, for example, such that they fixate CO2. This is something we do, for example, in a collaboration with the lab of Ron Milo in Israel. So what we do there, we can transplant the CO2 fixation pathway from a plant into a bacterium like E. coli. So E. coli naturally just uses the sugars or something that you can use in our gut. But now we can just transfer a pathway from a plant, let's say, into E. coli and then try to get this functioning such that the E. coli is not eating sugars anymore, but that it's eating CO2. And then you can imagine, then you can address a lot of problems if you can make chemicals out of CO2.

Synthetic biology, I said it's engineering biology, but we're not there yet. So I'm a chemical engineer. So I know I learned how to build a chemical plant. And this works, usually. We designed this at the computer. And then we built the plant, and we know the plant is working. And this is something we cannot do with a biological system. Let's take the CO2 fixation pathway. In our case, we're not there that we designed this at the computer. We install this in E. coli, and it's working. It's still a lot of trial and error.

And our CRISPR allows us to do a lot of trial and error, to do this really at the massively large scale. So we're trying at the moment to make hundreds, thousands of genetic changes and then just try which of them is helping E. coli in this case to work with this CO2 fixation pathway. And from this trial and error, we can then kind of iterate a little bit and get some more understanding and then do this in a more rational way.

Host:
At the University of Tübingen, Professor Link is part of the "Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections" (CMFI) cluster of excellence. This is a great enrichment for his research.

Prof. Link:
So, in the cluster, the important thing is that we have experts in these different research areas, infection biology, and especially the microbiome, because, it's a very dynamic, it's a very complex, and competitive field or fields.
So doing this on your own is very demanding. So often these are collaborations where we work, for example, with colleagues on the gut microbiome, and then we can take our methods, work with these colleagues who have other expertise, for example, in these different bacteria. We are focusing a lot on E. coli, because it's simple, it's well known, and then moving already to another bacterium is somewhat difficult, and therefore it needs collaborators, and this helps a lot in Tübingen.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a Podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes. There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Link. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends and colleagues.

Authors: Chris Veit and Joti Fotiadis.

Special thanks to: Professor Hannes Link, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.

#8

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
Are Roots The Key To Climate Change? - Prof. Dr. Michaela Dippold


Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research, the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer, and I’m your host. In today's episode, we meet Professor Michaela Dippold.

Prof. Dippold:
From all the subjects in the environment, the soil seems for me the one where we know the least and everything where we know the least always fascinated me all over my life.

Host:
She is Professor of Geo-Biosphere Interactions at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Tübingen. She specializes in the relationship between plants and the connection they form to soil via their roots.

Prof. Dippold:
The key to my research is the fascination about nature. Going outdoor, enjoying what you see, and the willingness to understand the processes in the environment to be able to protect the fascination of nature.

Host:
A fascination with nature has always been a part of Professor Dippold's life.
Growing up on a farm, she spent most of her childhood outdoors.

Prof. Dippold:
I grew up on a farm where I was taught from the beginning that the source of our life, that food protection is essential, and that the soil is the source of our food production. And by that, I started to study geoecology with a focus on soil science. So, I started at the University of Bayreuth, where I studied geoecology. Then I went to the University of Göttingen, where I was for several years in an agricultural faculty, really working in the field of agriculture. But then I was attracted back to the geoscience and the Geo ecology by the University of Tübingen and ended up here on this full professorship.

Host:
To better understand what kind of research Professor Dippold specializes in, we need to take a closer look at two terms. The biosphere and the geosphere.

Prof. Dippold: So the biosphere is all the living components of that planet that comprise the elements we see, the animals, the plants. But a lot of the biosphere is invisible for us, and this is the microbial world. So for example, our body consists of more microbial cells than human cells, and similar, it's everywhere in the environment. But so all these living components live in their environment, which consists of many abiotic components. And this is the minerals they are living on, they are feeding on; this comprises the water, the air that is surrounding them, and all these abiotic components, they comprise the geosphere.

Host:
In the soil, plants interact with minerals. This process is of great interest to Professor Dippold and her team. In other words:

-Everything about biogeochemistry
-How the various elements cycle through the environment
-up to the role of plants and microbes in these cycles.

The current projects of Professor Dippold and her team mainly focus on
-Agriculture
-Carbon capture in soils
-and the impact fire has on ecosystems and nutrient dynamics.

For Professor Dippold, there is one project that is of great importance:
-The research on the rhizosphere of crops in drought-prone areas, which are also severely affected by climate change.

Prof. Dippold:
I'm looking at crops which may be able to produce yield even if climate change aggravates the production conditions in some areas of the globe dramatically. And dramatic impacts we will definitely have in the tropics. Large parts of the tropics will suffer from strongly increasing droughts, and the droughts will be more abundant, the droughts will be more severe. And the crop production there is at the moment not adapted to that because the crop production went from very traditional crops to crops which have a potential to be sold on markets. And these crops are not those which are the most resistant or robust to the climate change that we may expect.

Host:
To survive these extreme changes, plants need to be better adapted.
And this is where Professor Dippold's research comes in.

Prof. Dippold:
Water uptake, nutrient uptake—all this occurs by the roots, and the roots need the adaptations to deal with drier soils, with soils which start to get nutrient depleted due to droughts when nutrients are less available. And roots and soil traditionally interact in many ways, and modern breeding did not look at these ways at all because you can't
easily look below ground. You can easily see the leaves, you optimize the leaves, you are breeding with high fertilizer input under ideal conditions. You never look under production under marginal conditions.

Host:
And that is exactly what Professor Dippold's research is all about. She likes to challenge herself.

Prof. Dippold:
From all the subjects in the environment, the soil seems for me the one where we know the least, and everything where we know the least always fascinated me all over my life.

Host:
Let's go back to the roots, literally. One of the main targets of Professor Dippold's research are the so-called mycorrhiza fungi, an ancient symbiosis between plants and fungi.

Prof. Dippold:
This lasts back to the first plant coming from the water to the land, which did not have roots at all, but which only took up their nutrients by the fungi which was interacting with the plant. And this symbiosis still exists, and it's there for 80% of the plants that we can see, nearly all crops have it. And this symbiosis helps, especially under drought. And one of our key outcomes was that the symbiosis may always be there, but only under drought, the symbiosis start to become active. And it starts to really supply the plant with the nutrients it needs, which it cannot take up by itself anymore if the soil is completely dried out. But the fungi is still active.

I think mycorrhizal fungi are definitely one of the keys. They are not the only ones, so they also do not work on their own. That is the very interesting thing. So there are many bacteria, so a magnitude of bacteria around the roots. It's the similar thing then with our body. Around the root is a magnitude more of bacteria cells than there are root cells. They all interact with the plant, and they all interact also with the fungi. So, the system is really complex that is going on there. And the moment the system is stressed, because, for example, a drought appears, a heat wave comes, or any of these disturbances that global change will bring with higher abundance. These stresses induce shifts in the system, and kinds of rescue mechanisms start that enable or maintain the plant staying alive through these periods where real growth is not possible anymore.

Host:
The element fire also endangers plants. This brings us to another important area of research in Professor Dippold's work, disturbance ecology. If there are conditions that lead to a temporal change in the ecosystem, experts speak of a "disturbance." Examples include floods, earthquakes, storms, and even fires.

Prof. Dippold:

Such disturbances strongly interrupt the cycle of systems and fires; as we know from the daily press, they are increasing in many ecosystems globally with high abundance; the areas they cover are larger and larger. And the implications of them are very tough for the environment and for the people.

Host:
But what kind of fires are we talking about? The natural ones or the man-made ones?

Prof. Dippold:
We talk about both natural fires and man-made fires, which are somehow related. So there is ecosystems globally which really depend on a certain degree of natural fires. But under the current conditions in all systems globally, the fire abundance and severity increase, and very often they are man-made. So systems which tend to burn under natural conditions burn now much more often. And it's very often because the fires are fires from agricultural practices or forest management practices which were lost out of control. But it's also because of camping or the phenomenon we read about in the daily press. And this high intensity and high abundance of fires exceeds what the ecosystems are adapted to.

Host:
Fires don't usually go deep into the ground. Just a few millimeters. And even if the heat doesn't penetrate deep into the soil, the loss of vegetation can be a big problem for sensitive ecosystems like rainforests.

Prof. Dippold:
The consequences are more on a long-term basis. So in those systems which, like the tropical rainforest, have this extremely close recycling of nutrients, you take out one component of the cycle. And taking this component, the vegetation off, means the cycle is open and means the nutrients are lost. And this loss of nutrients has consequences for decades to centuries because they need to be recovered from the soil. And then it depends on how rich the soil is, if it can sustain that the same vegetation grows again in a certain time. Or whether the loss of nutrients really is now a limiting factor for the vegetation coming up after the fire.

Host:
These are just a few examples of Professor Dippold's research. As a scientist, the university naturally plays a large role in her research.

Prof. Dippold:
With moving here, I was the first time able to really realize my research in all depths. So, I got a lot of opportunities here. And the working environment here is so rich in opportunities for collaborations that the first time I have the feeling that all the targets which were restricted I couldn't tackle in the past. All these doors are now open for my research.


My favorite part of the job is educating PhD students. So, bringing somebody who has this kind of, I want to look into science, into this fascination of searching for answers. And this happiness that you see in the eyes of your PhD students when they found out something really astonishing, something really new. And they identify, and they realize something that they say, wow. And now I'm very close to the theory that this and this researcher once postulated, this makes you really happy.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a Podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes. There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Dippold. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends and colleagues.

Authors: Chris Veit and Joti Fotiadis.

Special thanks to: Professor Michaela Dippold, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.

My name is Jennifer, thanks for listening and see you next time.

#9

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
Can Vaccines Heal Cancer? Prof. Juliane Walz


Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer, and I’m your host. In today's episode, we meet Professor Juliane Walz.

Prof. Walz:
Very, very early in my life, I decided I wanted to do something with cancer and develop treatments for cancer. This started when my mom suffered from breast cancer when I was 15-year-old.

Host:
She is Professor for Peptide-Based Immunotherapy and Medical Director of the Clinical Cooperation Unit, Translational Immunology. Her research focuses on the development of novel peptide-based immunotherapeutic concepts fortumorsr and infectious diseases.

Prof. Walz:
I see this high need every day as a clinician in the hospital. Of course, I have this personalized experience with cancer. I think this drives me every day to performing better and providing novel options, because it's really hard to enter a patient room and tell the patient we have nothing more to give. I really hope that there will be a time point where I don't have to say this again to a cancer patient.

Host:
As we know, this is not yet possible. But to achieve this, Professor Walz is mainly developing vaccines for cancer patients. These are based on peptides. Peptides are short proteins found on the surface of all cells in the human body, including cancer cells.

Prof. Walz:
And these peptides differ between cancer cells and healthy cells and allow the immune system to detect tumor cells as foreign and to destroy them. My research really focuses on identifying these peptides and using them for immunotherapy to target cancer cells.

Host:
To understand why Professor Walz's research is so important, let's take a closer look at immunotherapy.


Prof. Walz:
Immunotherapy has entered clinical routine and added a layer of therapy to the classical cancer treatment with the surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. This was started with the development of the so-called immune checkpoint inhibitors, which I think was claimed as the breakthrough in cancer research already in 2013. Immune checkpoint inhibitors are antibodies that are able to unlock the potential of the immune system, namely the T cells, which are the strongest cells of our immune system to attack cancer. These immune checkpoint inhibitors just unlock the activity of these T cells to target cancer cells. They are in an unspecific way. Based on the success of the immune checkpoint inhibitors that are now approved for the treatment of several cancers, the specific cancer immunotherapies that really target the immune cells directly to the cancer emerged, which are the bi-specific antibodies, which are the CAR T cells, and which are now the cancer vaccines that are now absolutely in the focus of research.

What cancer vaccines do, and you always have to see it in contrast to the prophylactic vaccines that we are applying against pathogens, against virus and bacteria, is that they are applied to patients that are already suffering from cancer. And the idea is with the vaccine to train the immune system, and particularly the T cells, to detect the antigens that are presented by a tumor and then attack the tumors. So usually you go at the site far away from the tumor, where you have no tumor cells and no immunosuppressive microenvironment that is usually around the tumor. To train the immune system, you apply antigens or mRNA or genetic parts of the tumor cells, and you train the immune system locally.

Host:
Peptide vaccines represent a huge opportunity for scientists and patients. The vaccines can now be developed individually for each patient, something we call “personalized medicine.” So it fits the patient’s body exactly and has a high chance of producing the desired results with minimal side effects.

Prof. Walz:
We really have the opportunity to analyze individual patients' tumor and characterize these peptides from really the individual tumor cells of the patient, and then use these peptides in an individualized approach for a vaccine. So this really means we analyze the peptides, we produce them individualized for the patient, and then apply a personalized vaccine. And there are, of course, various steps to personalize. Of course, we could also only personalize to the specific HLA allotype, which is comparable to the blood group of a patient. So it's an individual marker of the patient, and we could just select peptides for these HLA allotypes. That would be the smallest level of personalization. What we also could do, and this is what we also do in a trial, is a so-called warehouse concept where we produce the best peptides that we have analyzed before in drug quality, and then do these individualized analysis of the patient's peptide, and then select out of this pre-produced warehouse the best peptides and compose them in a onalized vaccine, which makes it much faster and cost-saving than really producing each individual peptide for each individual patient.

Host:
In contrast to chemotherapy, in which large areas of diseased and healthy cells are destroyed and the entire organism suffers, individualized, cancer vaccines only target the cancer cells using the patient's own immune system.
But the cancer vaccine takes longer to show results.

Prof. Walz:
The vaccine first has to train the T Cells, which takes about four weeks, I would say, then T cells have to expand, and then they have to find the tumor cells. So until you see effects, I would say it takes eight weeks to three months.

Host:
There is one current project that Professor Walz and her team are working on. It is a vaccine against a cancer called fibrolamellar carcinoma. This is a rare disease that usually affects the liver of young adults or adolescents with no previous liver disease.

Prof. Walz:
In most cases, this disease is detected late, so this means when the cancer has already spread and there are metastases, so the cancer is not treatable by surgery, and indeed, so far there is no approved treatment for this specific tumor entity. What we've done already in preclinical work is we have developed a vaccine that is targeting a specific genetic alteration in these cancer patients, and we are currently evaluating this specific vaccine in a clinical trial, and I really hope that this will change the treatment landscape of this rare cancer where there's nothing available for these really young adults.

We have one case where we already applied this vaccine to a 15-year-old girl that was in a situation where there was no treatment left, and she suffered from this fibrolamellar cancer, and we were asked if there's any possibility what we could do, and we designed this vaccine for that patient and applied only two doses and could show that we induced a strong T cell response against the vaccine peptides. Since we applied this vaccine and induced the T cell response, the patient had no relapse anymore, so she's disease-free, which is now three and a half years since the last dose of the vaccine, and this is something that really drives all of us and enabled also then this clinical trial where we could now offer this vaccine to many more of these patients, and I really hope that this example in a rare tumor entity could be spread to other solid tumors, breast cancer, lung cancer, to make these vaccines just available for more patient groups.

I think the idea of combining anti-cancer drugs to improve immune system activation and clinical efficacy, that is really one of my goals that I want to follow up in the next years, and I think Tübingen provides the perfect environment to reach these goals, and there are so many preclinical work going on, and we hopefully will next year also enter the first trial where we combine for the first time the bi-specific antibodies and the peptide vaccine, so I think we are really far also in providing these approaches to the cancer patients now.

Host:
At the University of Tübingen, Professor Walz is one of three spokespersons of the "Image-guided and functionally instructed tumour therapies" (iFIT) Cluster of Excellence.
It is the only oncology cluster in Germany, with three research areas working together on an interdisciplinary basis. We already talked about this cluster of excellence in the episode with neuro-oncologist Professor Tabatabai. You can listen to this episode in our podcast channel.
For Professor Walz, the cluster is the perfect way to develop and advance her research.

Prof. Walz:
Tübingen really builds on this pioneer work and has established really a strong immunology and cancer research community, which was further strengthened by our cluster of excellence iFIT that was started in 2019. And it really merged the three main research areas that we have in Tübingen. So imaging, making a tumor cell or tumors visible for the physicians and molecular target therapy, which is the direct specific targeting of tumors by drugs and immunotherapy, which is really harnessing the immune system against cancer. And I think this really strong community that is now merged in this cluster really helps us to develop novel treatments and then also directly translate them to the patients.

The University of Tübingen really provides me the perfect background to do my science, and also starting as a young physician in clinics and wanting to start a scientific year, there are so many great opportunities to support young researchers. I entered the Fortune program that is an internal program that supports first staff and funding to start research projects. There are also a lot of programs for females in science, so I was really supported in the so-called TÜFF program supporting females on academic track to habilitation, getting a professorship. Also with regard to funding, but also mentoring, learning all these skills and knowledge that you need to do an academic year, there the University of Tübingen really provides the perfect environment.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a Podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes. There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Walz. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends and colleagues.

Authors: Chris Veit and Joti Fotiadis.

Special thanks to: Professor Juliane Walz, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.


My name is Jennifer, thanks for listening and see you next time.