Daniel Moreno-Andrés graduated in Biochemistry from the University of Valencia (Spain) in 2005 and completed his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in early 2010. Subsequently, he embarked on a postdoc at the Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Ulm (Germany). There he focused on developing microscopy-based methods for mapping protein interactions in living cells. In early 2013, he transitioned to the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory at the Max Planck Society in Tübingen (Germany), where he shifted to research in cellular mitosis. Since April 2020, he is group leader and lecturer at the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology, Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University (Germany). Here, his team (@dmorenolab) performs basic and translational research in cell division, mitotic chromatin decondensation and nuclear reformation.
Cell division, or mitosis, is a breathtaking choreography that showcases the grandeur of life. The primary objective of this process is to meticulously separate the two copies of the cell genome, presented in the form of chromatin, and allocate them between two daughter cells. Consequently, it holds paramount significance for the reproduction of unicellular organisms […]
Man does not live by hardware alone. Indeed, great material and conceptual improvements in the machinery of optical microscopes have occurred in recent decades. The examples are numerous (some example here; https://mappingignorance.org/2013/12/23/bessel-beam-plane-illumination-microscopy-another-smart-solution-for-an-old-challenge/). However, what is being achieved only with software and computing power seems a matter of magic. It is not only that programs and […]
Almost every one of our body cells bears in its nucleus about 2 meters of DNA containing the genes that shape our being. All that, roughly 20.000 protein-coding genes, regulatory and unknown-function sequences, tightly packed inside a structure that has a volume of only a few cubic micrometres. How this huge amount of material is […]
Behind the symmetrical shell of humans and vertebrates lies a profound asymmetry. Our bilaterality breaks down inside our body. Not only our viscera are organized asymmetrically. Also our brain and nervous system, whose general appearance seems symmetrical, present lateralized structure and functioning. Among cognitive systems for example, language, attention, emotional processing, working memory and executive […]
Running is an activity that humans have held for millennia. It has been a tool, a hobby or a fashion rose by needs, crisis, culture or marketing campaigns. Today, in a busy and sedentary society aware that to maintain health it is necessary to move the ass, running has become again a major way of […]
They say that we were born to run, not metaphorically as in that famous song by Bruce Springsteen, but more literally. The cursorial human being is neither the fastest nor the agilest or the most powerful (a simple backpack complicates things quite a lot). However humans, despite their quaint upright figure, present some breakneck numbers […]
They say that Information is power. Probably because having the knowledge, when the data are correct, it is essential to anticipate the right move that will lead to success. Today, several decades into the information age seems to be no doubt about that. Regardless, in matters affecting our health we find a tangible example of […]
I still remember the order and control exhibited by the chemistry of life that they explained to me in the early years of college. For me, the regulation of gene expression was the supreme paradigm of organization. The promoters, those regulatory sequences preceding genes, were unmistakable ports where plenty of proteins (transcription factors and polymerases) […]
Some pharmaceutical painkillers and analgesics like Noscapine, papaverine and tubocurarine or the most famous opioids codeine or morphine are Benzylisoquinoline derivatives. Few of them are used daily for thousands of people to relieve a variety of physical pains. However, due to their rather complex biosynthesis, they are still obtained by processing plant extracts (mainly from […]
Since the cells were discovered with the advent of the microscope in the late seventeenth century, scientists have tried hard to find out what is going on into them. An avalanche of techniques and technologies emerged over the course of decades slowly discovering important molecular features of the cellular world to our knowledge and our […]