Dr. Sergio Leonardo Avila Calero

The CellGen project is composed of two main parts. The first part investigates whether cell cultures accumulate mutations with progressive number of passages. One of the advantages of cell culture is to provide best quality of DNA/RNA and metaphases. Hence, we expect that cell culture will experience a renaissance in the light of high throughput sequencing techniques. However, it is still not clear how the number of passages (i.e., the number of times cells are transferred from vessel to vessel) can affect genetic and chromosomal composition.

The BMBF-funded GBOL, the German Barcode of Life initiative, has been run successfully over the last eight years. It delivered an operative DNA barcode reference library for German animals, fungi and plants. However, a significant proportion of insect taxa has so far been excluded from GBOL and merely all biodiversity research, because no or only very insufficient expertise and information are available that allow to get a grip on them. They are called “Dark Taxa”.

ZFMK Biobank archives viable cell material for research and ex-situ conservation.