First-Person Report: Ulrike Gaul Interview by Stefanie Schramm

Your job in Munich will be to establish systems biology, a discipline that is barely represented in Germany at the moment. What is it about?
We aim to understand how genes and proteins work together in an organism, especially during development. Thousands of genes have to be activated and deactivated in the right places at the right times. Ultimately, we want to find out how the one-dimensional DNA sequence undergoes a four-dimensional process - if you include the dimension of time - to become a fly.

Once the human genome was sequenced, many people believed it would be possible to simply read the »book of life«. Now it all turns out to be much more complicated, even with a simple fly?
Indeed, but we already knew that back then. (laughs) Today, individual genes can easily be read. The largest part of the DNA however doesn't actually code any proteins. It holds the control elements that determine when which gene is read. These command centres are not so easy to find. And that's exactly what we're working on. Sequencing, in our case of the fly genome, was only the beginning.

What does your research say about humans?
The control mechanisms are not identical in humans - but they are similar. We are learning how genes are regulated.

What might possible applications be?
In stem cell research we try to turn undifferentiated cells into specialised ones, for example liver cells, to help people with liver cancer. Basically you have to replicate the process that also occurs in an embryo. It will be a long time yet before we have a practical application, but particularly in Munich there are excellent researchers working on this who could benefit from our results.

What stimuli for your research are you expecting in return?
Munich is one of the most diverse scientific locations in Germany. And systems biology requires experts from a wide range of disciplines: mathematicians, molecular biologists, nanotechnologists. These colleagues can help us test our predictions regarding the control processes. I'm already looking forward to working with them.

What will you miss?
The energy and the chaos of New York. On the other hand Munich is less stressful, the underground trains even run at regular intervals. And the food is good. I like to cook and was worried that I wouldn't be able to get any fresh coriander, but it's sold at the Viktualienmarkt. I've already checked that out.


A woman and her idear

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Ulrike Gaul studied biology and physics in Tübingen. After completing her doctorate she went to Berkeley, then to Rockefeller University in New York. In the spring she plans to move to the Gene Centre of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. A molecular biologist, she has won one of the first nine Humboldt Professorships. With this award the Federal Ministry of Education and Research aims to attract top-class international researchers to Germany; each award winner receives five million euros over a period of five years.

DIE ZEIT :: March 2009