Daniel M. Ibrahim

I'm a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin and study the genetic basis of developmental disorders in humans, which often affect only very few patients. The cat in the picture is Castro. Scientifically, I care most about gene regulation, which means why any given gene is activated (or repressed) only in certain cells and tissues. Misregulation of genes is the molecular basis for many developmental disorders and changes in gene regulation are probably a major driving force of evolution. If you (losely) connect these two points, you see how they drove me to experiment.com when I first learnt about LilBub. I couldn't help but think of how similar her case is to patients born with a rare disease, only that she's a cat.

June 2014