MPI for Multidisciplinary Sciences

💡 @abberior.rocks, the 2012 spin-off from our Department of NanoBiophotonics & German Cancer Research Center, specializes in high-resolution fluorescence microscopy. They won 1st place at the 2025 Göttingen Northeim Innovation Award in their category – congrats to all!

🔬 Ovo Labs, co-founded by Melina Schuh @schuhlab.bsky.social, develops therapeutics to improve egg quality, helping women stay fertile longer and boosting IVF success. Congrats to the team on this bold step from research to real-world impact – we are excited to see what comes next!

MPI-NAT Highlights 2025 – Excellent research does not only lead to new insights; it can also inspire new companies. This year, a new start-up emerged from our institute and an already established company was awarded for their innovation. 👇

🏅 Manfred Eigen Award Lecture – Roderick MacKinnon
Honored for his fundamental discoveries on ion channel structure and function. He was honored with the Award Lecture, a medal, and 10,000 euros.

🏅 Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer Award Lecture – Katalin Karikó
Recognized for her groundbreaking work on mRNA vaccines. She received the Award Lecture, a medal, and 10,000 euros – and shared powerful insights into 60 years of RNA research and her own path in science.

MPI-NAT Highlights 2025 – Two exceptional scientists and Nobel laureates visited our institute this year, and we were proud to honor them as part of our Award Lecture series. Congratulations to both award recipients on their extraordinary achievements! 🏅👇

MPI-NAT wrapped 2025 🎉

This shows: Success has many faces at our institute. Once again, congratulations to all! 🥂

Our early-career researchers also excelled: impressive dissertations and publications, new scholarships and grants, and even the chance to meet Nobel Prize winners at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. Plus, four of our trainees received the @maxplanck.de Trainee Award.

👏 Stefan Hell – Landesmedaille of Lower Saxony
👏 Jens Frahm – Grand Cross of Merit
👏 Loren Andreas – Heisenberg position

👏 Marina Rodnina – ERC Synergy Grant
👏 Dirk Görlich – Lasker Award
👏 Melina Schuh @schuhlab.bsky.social – Science Breakthrough 2025, Mendel Lecture, Theodor Boveri Lecture
👏 Erwin Neher – Honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford

MPI-NAT Highlights 2025 – A year of exceptional successes at our institute! 🥳
This year, our colleagues were recognized for outstanding contributions: 👇

Morgenrot. Am @mpi-nat.bsky.social Faßberg-Campus.

These are just a few of this year’s highlights – many more findings await you in our newsroom. Congratulations to all the scientists involved!👏 www.mpinat.mpg.de/2500106/pres...

🧬 With increasing age, egg cells accumulate more and more DNA damage. Researchers have shown in experiments with mice that aged egg cells repair their DNA less efficiently than young ones, and that repair becomes more error-prone with advancing maternal age.

🦙 Once infected, the herpes virus remains in our body for life. A team from Göttingen and Hamburg has succeeded in finding a mini-antibody that can be used to switch off a protein essential for the infection. Their findings promise new therapies to treat and prevent severe herpes infections.

🧠 Problems speaking or walking, muscle tremors, and seizures – in a large interdisciplinary collaboration, scientists have discovered a new developmental disorder that can be traced back to variations in the UNC13A gene. The findings open up treatment options for those affected.

MPI-NAT Highlights 2025 – We look back on a year full of discoveries, awards, and special moments at our institute. Today, we start with our research highlights.
Once again, our scientists have uncovered exciting new insights – with benefits far beyond the lab: 👇

Albert-Overhauser Award for Vrinda Sant! Our postdoc is honored by the Division of Magnetic Resonance of the German Chemical Society for her publication “Lipidic folding pathway of α-synuclein via a toxic oligomer” published in Nature Communications – Congratulations!🍾

“The solution to the problem wasn’t immediately obvious, but simple in the end.”— 2025 #LaskerAward winner Dirk Görlich on figuring out the structures and functions of low-complexity domains within protein sequences. 🧪
#LaskerLaureate
@mpi-nat.bsky.social
laskerfoundation.org/winners/stru...

Many congratulations to @abberior.rocks! 🥂
The Göttingen-based company is a spin-off from Stefan Hell’s Department of NanoBiophotonics at our institute and the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.

For the @goettingen-campus.de , this is also a great honor: In addition to four Max Planck researchers, four scientists from the @uni-goettingen.de were also honored.

The Max Planck Society @maxplanck.de ranks seventh in the global ranking, and is the only German organization in the top 10.

Four scientists of our institute are among the most influential scientists of the past decade in their respective fields, according to @clarivate.com Analytics. Congratulations to @patrick-cramer.maxplanck.de, Stefan Hell, Klaus-Armin Nave, and Johannes Söding 🥳🍾!
www.mpinat.mpg.de/5167382/pr_2...

From the north campus to our institute: A rainbow of research lit up the Göttingen Campus @goettingen-campus.de this morning 🌈💡💛!

In their project CHAPEROME, the team aims to elucidate how molecular folding helpers – known as chaperones – actively control protein synthesis on the ribosome. They will investigate how chaperones and translation factors cooperate to help cells cope with stress and changing physiological demands.

10 million euros in funding for research into new mechanisms of translation regulation: Congratulations to our director Marina Rodnina & her colleagues Johannes Buchner @tum.de & Judith Frydman @stanford.edu on receiving an ERC Synergy Grant! @erc.europa.eu #ERCSyG
www.mpinat.mpg.de/5162804/pr_2...

Full moon on the Fassberg. @mpi-nat.bsky.social

In our Department of Theoretical and Computational Biophysics @compbiophys.bsky.social, several exciting projects are waiting for you 😊. Are you currently looking for a new challenge as a PhD student or postdoc? Why not take a look at our job posting? ⬇️

📅 Save the date: We will be back with our scientific lecture series at the beginning of Oct 2026 – with new topics and new speakers. Can’t wait to see many of you again.
Until then: Stay curious 🔎💡!