The Becker Group has a new preprint on bioRxiv! The paper, “Microglia signals to fibroblasts and neural progenitors to control regenerative neurogenesis after spinal cord injury in zebrafish” was spearheaded by Alberto Docampo-Seara, and shows how microglia restricts/controls the neurogenic potential of neural progenitors by direct signaling to them and also by an indirect interaction with fibroblasts.

Catherina and Thomas presented our group’s work on spinal cord regeneration in two talks at the EMBO | The Company of Biologists Workshop - Axonal Degeneration and Regeneration meeting at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) in Okinawa, Japan! Sofiia Ushakova, a master’s student in the Becker Group presented her thesis work on Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) at this exciting workshop in Japan.

Marie Hoyer won the Dresden Excellence Award for her Master’s Thesis! Her project, "Tissue mechanics during spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish larvae,” was a collaborative project between the Becker Group and the group of Otger Campàs (Excellence Cluster Physics of Life), supervised by Stephen Enos (Becker Group) and with the substantial support of Shuo-Ting Yen (Campàs Group). The award is issued each year by the City of Dresden to four awardees, to recognize excellent scholarship at all academic levels (Bachelor’s, Master’s, Ph.D., Habilitation). Congratulations Marie!

The Becker Group joined the fifth annual NCT/UCC-Benefizlauf (benefit run) to support cancer research! Organized by the Nationale Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen Dresden (NCT/UCC), members of the group contributed 26 kilometers to the day’s total!

The Becker Group again organized the zebrafish room at the CRTD for the Long Night of Science! This year, the demonstrations and activities were hosted in conjunction with the Campàs Group from the Physics of Life (PoL) Cluster of Excellence at the TU Dresden. Hundreds of visitors came to the CRTD to see the wide range of science taking place in the CMCB and at PoL.

At this year’s Life Science Campus Summer Conference, Elena Nicolay, who is completing her master’s thesis in the Becker Group under the supervision of Friederike Kessel, won the Audience Award for Best Scientific Content. She was presenting on her work, titled, "Dynamics of macrophage polarization in spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish larvae.” Congratulations Elena!