NOWICK LAB

Our main focus is on the impact of transcription factors (TFs) and non-coding RNAs on differences in transcriptomes, gene regulatory networks, and ultimately the phenotype. TFs are proteins that form gene regulatory networks to regulate the expression of all genes. TFs typically bind to specific DNA sequence motives to control the expression of a few to many other genes. Therefore, evolutionary changes in TFs can potentially have large impacts on the phenotype of a species. Indeed, we demonstrated that some TF genes show significantly more sequence and expression differences between humans and chimpanzees than other types of genes. Intriguingly, some of these fast evolving TFs seem to play a role in brain and cognitive functions.

Primary location: Berlin