Beyond the exome

DFG funded Research Group

People of Beyond the exome

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Carmen Birchmeier

Testbeschreibung Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine
Robert-Rössle-Str. 10
D-13125 Berlin, Germany

Phone: +49 (0)30 9406 2403
FAX: +49 (0)30 9406 3765
Email: cbirch@mdc-berlin.de
Homepage:



Carmen Birchmeier, PhD is a full full professor for Developmental Biology/Signal Transduction at the Charité University Hospital, Berlin, and holds a laboratory at the Charité and the Max-Delbrück-Center. She is a member of the NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence at the Charité and a Principal Investigator at the Einstein Center for Neurosciences. She was trained in biochemistry at the University of Konstanz, University of California San Diego, and the ETH Zürich, and did a thesis in Molecular Biology at the University of Zürich. She subsequently worked at the Cold Spring Harbor laboratory in New York, and became a junior group leader at the Max Delbrück Laboratory of the MPG in Cologne. Since 1995 she works in Berlin. She uses the mouse as model organisms to study developmental and regeneration of the skeletal muscle and the nervous system. In particular, she discovered the functions of the Met tyrosine kinase receptors in muscle migration and development and the roles of tyrosine kinase receptors ErbB2/ErbB3 in development of the peripheral nervous system. In recent years, she worked on transcription factors in development of the nervous system of mice, and used this knowledge to understand congenital disorders of the human nervous system. In the context of the Forschergruppe ‘Beyond the Exome, Carmen Birchmeier concentrates on biological oscillators and their role muscle stem cells. Her group recently showed that oscillatory expression of myogenic differentiation factors and Notch signaling components decides between proliferation and terminal differentiation of muscle stem cells. The importance of this regulatory mechanism is now investigated in a mouse model and human iPSC-derived myogenic cells.

Publications (selection)

Bladt F, Riethmacher D, Isenmann S, Aguzzi A, Birchmeier C. Essential role for the c-met receptor in the migration of myogenic precursor cells into the limb bud. Nature 1995;376:768–71.

Bröhl D, Vasyutina E, Czajkowski MT, Griger J, Rassek C, Rahn H-P, Purfürst B, Wende H, Birchmeier C. Colonization of the Satellite Cell Niche by Skeletal Muscle Progenitor Cells Depends on Notch Signals. Dev Cell 2012;23:469–81.

Wende H, Lechner SG, Cheret C, Bourane S, Kolanczyk ME, Pattyn A, Reuter K, Munier FL, Carroll P, Lewin GR, Birchmeier C. The transcription factor c-Maf controls touch receptor development and function. Science 2012;335:1373-6

Hernandez-Miranda LR, Ibrahim DM, Ruffault PL, Larrosa M, Balueva K, Müller T, Weerd W, Stolte-Dijkstra I, Hostra RMW, Brunet JF, Fortin G, Mundlos S, Birchmeier C. Mutation in LBX1/Lbx1 precludes transcription factor cooperativity and causes congenital hypoventilation in humans and mice. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2018;115:13021-13026.

Lahmann I, Bröhl D, Zyrianova T, Isomura A, Czajkowski MT, Kapoor V, Griger J, Ruffault PL, Mademtzoglou D, Zammit PS, Wunderlich T, Spuler S, Kühn R, Preibisch S, Wolf J, Kageyama R, Birchmeier C. Oscillations of MyoD and Hes1 proteins regulate the maintenance of activated muscle stem cells. Genes Dev 2019;33:524-535.