Ralf Jungmann receives funding from Volkswagen Foundation
Ralf Jungmann, Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Biochemistry and Professor for Experimental Physics at the LMU Munich, together with Maartje Bastings, Director of the Programmable Biomaterials Laboratory (PBL) in the EPFL School of Engineering (STI), and Ian Parish from the University of Melbourne and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, have received 1.5 million euros in research funding from the Volkswagen Foundation. The joint project of the three research groups, funded through the initiative ”Life? – A Fresh Scientific Approach to the Basic Principles of Life” from the Volkswagen Foundation, is aimed at unraveling the origin of multicellular life. The evolution of complex multicellular organisms 600 million years ago required sophisticated cell-cell communication systems to coordinate growth, differentiation, and tissue organization. This evolutionary leap is thought to have required a fundamental change in protein organization at the key interface for intercellular communication: the cell surface.