Prof. Dr. Michael Ziller
"No positions via CiM-IMPRS in 2024"
Dissecting the biological basis of mental illness
Stem Cell Biology
Genomics
Computational Biology
Functional Genomics
Mental Illness
Beyond GWAS, translating genetic associations underlying psychiatric disorders into neurobiological insights using functional genomics and induced pluripotent stem cell models it is the mission of my group to develop novel paradigms to understand the genetic basis of complex genetic and in particular psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
To implement this goal, the lab for functional genomics in psychiatry pursues a combined experimental and computational strategy to deconstruct the polygenic risk architecture underlying complex diseases with the goal to decode the molecular mechanisms that contribute to disease onset and progression and treatment resistance.
Moreover, it is the central goal of my lab to rapidly operationalize these insights to optimize patient treatment, obtain insights into the molecular cause of treatment resistance and identify new drug targets. In order to implement these goals, we use a wide variety of methods including pluripotent stem cell based neural differentiation system, various *omic profiling technologies, high throughput genetic screening/genome editing by CRISPR, electrophysiology, high-content imaging, mathematical modelling and statistical genetics approaches.
Vita
- 2003-2009 Diplom in Bioinformatics, University of Tübingen, Germany
- 2004-2010 Diplom in Physics University of Tübingen, Germany
- 2009-2010 Visiting student in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology,
Harvard University and the Broad Institute, USA - 2009-2015 Graduate Research Assistant, The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, USA
- 2010-2014 PhD student in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology,
Harvard University and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, USA - 2014-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology,
Harvard University, USA - 2016-2021 Principal Investigator and Independent Group Leader,
Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Germany - Since 2020 Full Professor for Functional Genomics in Psychiatry, Clinic for Mental Health,
University of Münster, Germany
Selected references
Yuan W, Ma S, Brown JR, Kim K, Murek V, Trastulla L, Meissner A, Lodato S, Shetty AS, Levin JZ, Buenrostro JD, Ziller MJ#, Arlotta P#, Temporally-divergent regulatory mechanisms govern neuronal development and diversification in the neocortex, Nature Neuroscience, 2022
Ziller MJ, Ortega JA, Quinlan KA, Santos DP, Gu H, Galonska C, Pop R, Martin EJ, Maidl S, Di Pardo A, Huang M, Meltzer HY, Heckman CJ, Gnirke A, Meissner A, Kiskinis E. Dissecting the role of de Novo DNA methylation dynamics in the development and function of human motor neurons, Cell Stem Cell, 2018
Cacchiarelli D*, Trapnell C*, Ziller MJ*, Soumillon M, Cesana M, Smith ZD, Karnik R, Ratanasirintrawoot S, Zhang X, Wu Z, Akopian V, Gifford CA, Rinn JL, Daley GQ, Meissner A, Lander ES, Mikkelsen TS, A scalable cellular reprogramming system and integrative genomic approaches reveal ordered transitions towards pluripotency in human cells, Cell, 2015
Ziller MJ, Reuven E, Yaffe Y, Donaghey J, Pop R, Mallard W, Issner R, Gifford CA, Goren A, Xing J, Gu H, Cacchiarelli D, Tsankov A, Epstein C, Rinn JL, Mikkelsen TS, Kohlbacher O, Gnirke A, Bernstein BE, Elkabetz Y, Meissner A, Dissecting neural differentiation regulatory networks through epigenetic footprinting, Nature, 2014
Ziller MJ, Gu H, Müller F, Donaghey J, Tsai LT, Kohlbacher O, De Jager PL, Rosen ED, Bennett DA, Bernstein BE, Gnirke A, Meissner A, Charting a dynamic DNA methylation landscape of the human genome, Nature, 2013
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