FMI science

📅 Save the date: 28 Nov at 3PM CET

Join the webinar on the new ERC Plus Grants.

🎤 ERC President Maria Leptin and Head of Scientific Dept at ERC Executive Agency Philippe Cupers will explain the scheme and take your questions.

🔴 Watch live at t.co/IMRfUa5NAr

Group photo of the EU-LIFE Strategy Meeting 2025 at FMI, Basel.

EU-LIFE Strategy Meeting 2025 wrapped up in #Basel with strong support, constructive exchanges and a very positive atmosphere.

A big thanks to the @fmiscience.bsky.social team for fostering a welcoming environment for productive, forward-looking discussions!

Read more 🔗 eu-life.eu/newsroom/new...

Inside the tunnel: Experiencing the brain’s response to sensory mismatches In this first-person account, FMI’s senior communications manager describes taking part in an early human trial that adapts previous experiments in mice to explore how the human brain responds when vi...

In this first-person account, FMI’s senior communications manager describes taking part in an early human trial that adapts previous experiments in mice to explore how the human brain responds when visual and auditory information suddenly fall out of sync. www.fmi.ch/news-events/...

Today is #LGBTQinSTEMDay — a moment to honor the contributions of LGBTQ+ individuals in science and to acknowledge the progress still ahead. At the FMI, we remain committed to building an environment where everyone feels respected, supported, and empowered to succeed.🌈

Last week, we hosted the @eu-life.bsky.social Strategy Meeting, bringing together Directors and key representatives of the 17 member institutes to discuss 2026 priorities. Participants also met leaders from the Basel Life Science cluster, heard from FMI group leaders & toured the Novartis Pavillon.

Excellent news for research in Switzerland — and for institutes like ours that depend on international grants, collaborations and networks. #HorizonEurope

📢 Last days to apply for our #PhD and #MDPhD programs! Become part of Basel, Europe’s #LifeScience hub, and grow in a dynamic, international, and supportive community. Apply by Nov 15: www.fmi.ch/education-ca...

The FMI, fmiscience.bsky.social, hosted the TriRhena Gene Regulation Club on Nov 5! 80+ researchers from Basel, Strasbourg & Freiburg joined for a half-day of talks on gene regulation, transcription & RNA. Thanks to all speakers — it was a blast! See you at IGBMC, Strasbourg, March 18, 2026!

EU-LIFE session “Research security in practice: making space for an honest conversation”, with • Henri Van Luenen, Director of Operations at The Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) • Christine Durinx, Managing Director, Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB) and member of the EU-LIFE Strategy Board • Yves Moreau, Professor of Engineering, KU Leuven • Nienke Buisman, Head of Unit for International Cooperation, European Commission DG Research & Innovation • Philippe Cupers, Head of the Life Sciences Unit, European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA)

Speakers and organisers of the EU-LIFE session “Research security in practice: making space for an honest conversation”: Nienke Buisman, Yves Moreau, Christine Durinx, Marta Agostinho, Henri van Luenen, Philippe Cupers, Iris Uribesalgo.

🔒 Strengthening research security through collaboration

Last week, EU-LIFE joined the European Commission @ec.europa.eu and 11 major research & innovation organisations to co-organise the 1st European Flagship Conference on #ResearchSecurity

Find out more ➡️ eu-life.eu/newsroom/new...

#SwissScienceImage
📷 Submit your best #photos and #videos of your research to the SNSF Scientific Image Competition!

The winning entries will be exhibited at the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography in May 2026.

🗓️ Submission deadline: 2 February 2026
➡️ https://sohub.io/kw8d

One clock, two functions: from daily rhythms to development Scientists at the FMI and the University of California-Santa Cruz have found that similar molecular machineries control daily circadian rhythms and developmental timing. Their work in worms shows that...

Now in @embojournal.org: Researchers in @labgrosshans.bsky.social & UCSC found that similar molecular machineries control daily circadian rhythms & developmental timing—showing that evolution can repurpose core timing systems to coordinate both daily cycles & growth. www.fmi.ch/news-events/...

#Call for Postdoc.Mobility. Expand your #research experience with a stay abroad. If you would like to find out more about this call, take part in our online information event on 17. November 2025.

➡️ sohub.io/51a4
🗓️Submission deadline: 3 February 2026

Is this a spooky spiderweb? 🕸️Or the veins of a vampire bat’s wing?🦇
Nope! It’s a microscopy image of the mouse barrel cortex—where clusters of brain cells process input from each whisker 🐭 (Image by Gabriele Pumo)
Happy Halloween! 🎃

Yesterday at the FMI, we paired checkmates with cheddar 🧀♟️ Clever moves, cheesy snacks and lots of laughs made for a fun afternoon!

Low oxygen promotes extravillous trophoblast progenitor expansion but restrains maturation Placental development occurs in a low oxygen environment, yet how oxygen tension instructs differentiation of progenitor cytotrophoblasts (CTB) along the extravillous versus villous pathways remains i...

...and one week later: the next one @fmiscience.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We were thrilled to welcome Novartis Chairman Giovanni Caforio to the FMI! He toured our labs and saw the work taking place at the new FMI-Novartis Applied Tissue Models Center. We are grateful for his visit and support in strengthening the collaboration between FMI and Novartis.

Programme of the upcoming TriRhena Gene Regulation Club in Basel on November 5, 2025 https://www.ie-freiburg.mpg.de/gene-regulation-club

Here is the schedule for the next TriRhena Gene Regulation Club at the FMI @fmiscience.bsky.social in Basel 🇨🇭 next week (5 Nov 2025; 14:00-18:45).

Exciting topics ahead & we are looking forward to the #newPI talks by @julianeg.bsky.social (MPI) & Anupama Hemalatha (FMI).

www.ie-freiburg.mpg.de/grc

For the love of frontier research, or why Elon’s rockets keep blowing up | EMBO reports EMBO Press is an editorially independent publishing platform for the development of EMBO scientific publications.

Nektarios Tavernarakis on why curiosity-driven research, not focusing on application, is fundamental to problem solving and requires government support in @emboreports.org doi.org/10.1038/s443...

Three FMI researchers awarded coveted SNSF Ambizione Grants Three FMI researchers — Nanci Winke, Arnau Ramos Prats, and Lukas Anneser — have been awarded a prestigious Ambizione Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Their work spans from unc...

Three FMI researchers—Nanci Winke, @neuramos.bsky.social & @lukas-anneser.bsky.social—have received @snsf.ch Ambizione Grants! Their projects explore how emotions shape behavior, how the brain responds to anxiety treatments, and how brain states affect learning & memory 🧠 www.fmi.ch/news-events/...

A model of apical-out human first trimester trophoblast organoids to study regeneration after syncytial damage The villous syncytiotrophoblast in humans is the interface between maternal blood and the placenta and its functions are essential for a successful pregnancy. The syncytium can be damaged in vivo foca...

another fascinating collaboration with the Turco lab @fmiscience.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Very much looking forward to this collaboration with @georgkeller.bsky.social at @fmiscience.bsky.social, using a cross-species approach in humans and mice to investigate the effects of antipsychotics on cortical circuit function.

Understanding schizophrenia by bridging mouse and human brain circuits FMI group leader Prof. Georg Keller and Prof. Philip Sterzer from Universitären Psychiatrischen Kliniken (UPK) Basel have jointly been awarded a Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF) grant over 1.5 mill...

FMI’s Prof. @georgkeller.bsky.social and UPK Basel’s Prof. Philip Sterzer have been awarded a 1.5 M CHF @snf-fns.ch grant to study how brain circuit changes underlie schizophrenia — bridging fundamental neuroscience and clinical research from mice to humans 🧠 www.fmi.ch/news-events/...

Today at the FMI, we celebrated Diwali, the Festival of Lights! 🪔 A huge thank you to our Indian colleagues for sharing this beautiful tradition that honors the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil 💫

Last week, we hosted an insightful event organised by @twist-basel.bsky.social, highlighting diverse career paths outside of academia. The panel discussion, followed by a lively apéro, was a great reminder of the many opportunities a PhD can open beyond the lab 🎓

And the next one: dx.doi.org/10.1038/s44318-025-00585-z . Super-fun collaboration with @partchlab.bsky.social & @gotworms.bsky.social to find similarities between developmental and circadian clocks – supported by @fmiscience.bsky.social Facilities and, financially, @snsf.ch and @erc.europa.eu . 1/n

TriRhena Gene Regulation Club The TriRhena Gene Regulation Club is a one-day symposium that brings together researchers from France (IGBMC), Germany (MPI-IE) and Switzerland (FMI) who share a common interest in gene regulation.

Registration closes today. Hurry up. ⌛

👉 The next TriRhena Gene Regulation Club takes place at the Friedrich Miescher Institute @fmiscience.bsky.social in Basel 🇨🇭.

📅 Nov. 5th, 2025 (14:00-20:00)
📌 FMI, Basel
✍️ Registration deadline: Oct. 20th, 2025

Fluorescently marked mouse colon | 2025 Photomicrography Competition Marius Mählen - Fluorescently marked mouse colon

Huge congrats to our Marius Mählen for having his image (taken with support from Koen Oost, Prisca Liberali & Laurent Gelman) selected among the top 20 photos in the Nikon Small World Competition—the world’s leading showcase of life under the microscope 🔬 www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20...

And here is a layperson video summary of parts of our recent paper👇

YouTube video by The Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research DNA rhythms orchestrate gene activity across development

🎥 FMI scientists discovered that thousands of C. elegans genes switch on and off in rhythmic patterns controlled by chromatin, revealing how gene timing shapes development & offering clues to human biological clocks. @labgrosshans.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dibw...

Don’t miss this career event, taking place tomorrow at the FMI 👇🏽