“This is my first visit and I’ve never been to the Middle East before but I’ve been interacting with Iranian scientists. There is a lot of potential here and I never hesitate to accept the invitation to come by because I had a good impression of them. I must say I was overwhelmed by the hospitality and it was a good chance to see some of the cultural highlights of Mashhad,” Jauch who is working at Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health added.
According to him, scientifically I had a lot of good discussion with Iranian working here and those who came overseas and that was very exciting. In China, there is a little bit of language barrier but I was impressed that the level of English is very high among Iranian somehow I faced no problem to talk to students, ISNA reported.
“I would be happy to have more interactions with scientists from Ferdowsi University,” He stated.
“Because Iranian scientists had to play by tougher rules, they learned to think about every little detail of a study or experiment,” he said.
Dr. Ralf Jauch studied Biology, Psychology and Archeology in Jena, Germany and Manchester before doing his PhD in a molecular biology program from 2001-2005 at the Max-Planck-Institute, Germany. In 2006 he got attracted to Singapore to join the recently established Genome Institute of Singapore for postdoctoral training.
From 2008-2013, he continued at the GIS as a research scientist and drove an interdisciplinary program at the interface of structural biochemistry, genomics and stem cell biology. In 2013 he joined the GIBH as principle investigator and carries out translation research within the DDP as well as academic projects within the stem cell institute.
“Our interest is to decipher the ‘enhancer code’, that is we wish to understand how regulatory information is genetically hard-wired in the genome. The ‘enhancer code’ determines when and where genes are expressed in our bodies and hence underlies the development of individuals, of species during evolution as well as of tumors when cancers arise,” he said.
“This code is ‘read’ by transcription factor proteins (TFs) that collaborate to trigger cell fate decisions. We use a combination of genomics (bioinformatics and next generation sequencing), structural biochemistry and stem cell biology,” Jauch went on to say.
“Goal of our work is to gain fundamental insights into genome regulation and protein-DNA recognition. We hope to translate these insights to generate synthetic factors to optimize cellular reprogramming to obtain cells suitable for replacement therapies. We also attempt to develop small-molecule as well as nucleic acid based drugs that target TFs and other genome regulators,” he continued.
Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health is a scientific research institute focusing on the studies of stem cell and regenerative medicine, chemical biology, infection and immunity, public health and scientific research equipment development.