Epigenetics @HelmholtzMunich

Dozens of researchers @Helmholtz Munich join forces to reveal the myriad of secrets of Epigenetics.

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Dozens of researchers at Helmholtz Munich joined forces

to reveal the myriad of secrets of Epigenetics.

The Epigenetics@HelmholtzMunich Community Research consists of almost 30 labs from 17 Helmholtz Munich institutes, committed to performing ground-breaking research in the field of epigenetics. These groups are pioneers in their respective disciplines, utilizing cutting edge techniques to answer the complex questions of today.

The topics studied by the community include: stem cells, cellular plasticity, metabolism, diabetes, computational biology, epidemiology, immunology, development, and systems biology. 

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Epigenetics in Numbers

28
Research Groups
16
Institutes
6
Departments

Key Activities

News & Highlights

Alle ansehen
When Metabolism Meets Chromatin: Histone Acylations Tune Gene Expression

IFE,

When Metabolism Meets Chromatin: Histone Acylations Tune Gene Expression

Metabolic dysfunction is a hallmark of numerous diseases, including diabetes and other metabolic disorders. But how do changes in our metabolism affect our cells and the way they function? How do they influence our genes?

The DNA is packaged into chromatin

IES, IFE,

Empowering Young Scientists: Applications Open for 2026 Chromatin Summer School

Talented PhD students are encouraged to apply for the upcoming Chromatin Summer School taking place from 17 - 29 August 2026

Verleihung des Bayerischen Maximiliansordens

Awards & Grants, Stem Cells, IES,

Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla Honored With the Maximiliansorden

Prof. Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla, this year’s Leibniz Prize winner, has received the Bavarian Maximiliansorden for Science and Art. Minister-President Dr. Markus Söder presented the distinguished state honor to her at the State Chancellery,…

Talent Forum Welcome

Events, Stem Cells, IES,

A Platform for Emerging Talent: The Helmholtz Munich Talent Forum 2025

The Helmholtz Munich Talent Forum took place on November 18–19, 2025, at the Helmholtz Munich Conference Center, bringing together eight outstanding early-career scientists from around the world working in the fields of Epigenetics and Nucleic Acids…

Exhibition Stem Cells at Deutsches Museum_For Website

Events, Stem Cells, IES, Molecular Targets and Therapeutics, IFE,

Exhibition on Cell Identity at the Deutsches Museum

How do the many different cells in the human body emerge from a single stem cell – and what makes each one unique? The Epigenetics Community at Helmholtz Munich explores these questions in a special exhibition at the Deutsches Museum. From 14. to 16.…

July 2025 GRC Conference Italy - Group photo

IFE,

GRC “Histone and DNA modifications” 2025 organised by Robert Schneider

The 2025 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) "Histone and DNA modifications" conference was organized by Robert Schneider from the Institute for Functional Epigenetics (IFE) at Helmholtz Munich

Businessmen shaking hands to seal a deal with his partner. Business and entrepreneurship award ceremony theme.

Recent Publications

Lai, L. ; Jong, A. ; Delerue, T. ; Lin, J. ; Thorand, B. ; Heier, M. ; Prokisch, H. ; Farzeen, A. ; Winkelmann, J. ; Thiering, E. ; Gieger, C. ; Peters, A. ; Waldenberger, M.

Association of DNA methylation with hypertension and blood pressure: A 7-year longitudinal study from KORA F4/FF4.
Nat. Bio. Eng., DOI: 10.1038/s41551-025-01598-z (2026)

Hu, E.Y. ; Oleshko, S. ; Firmani, S. ; Cheng, H. ; Zhu, Z. ; Ulmer, M.A. ; Arnold, M. ; Colomé-Tatché, M. ; Tang, J. ; Xhonneux, S. ; Marsico, A.

Enhancing link prediction in biomedical knowledge graphs with BioPathNet.
Mol. Psychiatry 31, 1823-1836 (2026)

De Donno, C. ; Lopez, J.P. ; Luecken, M. ; Kos, A. ; Brivio, E. ; Bordes, J. ; Yang, H. ; Deussing, J.M. ; Schmidt, M.V. ; Theis, F.J. ; Chen, A.

Single-cell characterization of the adult male hippocampus suggests a prominent, and cell-type specific, role for Nrgn and Sgk1 in response to a social stressor.
Cell Rep. Med. 7:102546 (2026)

Frädrich, J. ; Reyes, C.M. ; Hendel, M. ; Brunner, V. ; Toledo, B. ; Manevski, D. ; Sommer, A. ; Häußler, D. ; Beck, D. ; Lucarelli, D. ; Martínez de Villareal, J. ; Halle, L. ; Kfuri-Rubens, R. ; Çifcibaşı, K. ; Hirschberger, A. ; Öllinger, R. ; Knolle, P.A. ; Steiger, K. ; Rad, R. ; Theis, F.J. ; Real, F.X. ; Bärthel, S. ; Böttcher, J.P. ; Saur, D. ; Demir, I.E. ; Krüger, A.

Multimodal profiling of pancreatic cancer reveals a TIMP-1-dominated secretory profile determining pro-tumor immunoinstruction in human cancers.
Cell Syst. 17:101457 (2026)

Kurochkin, I. ; Altman, A.R. ; Caiado, I. ; Pértiga-Cabral, D. ; Halitzki, E. ; Minaeva, M. ; Zimmermannová, O. ; Henriques-Oliveira, L. ; Klein, D. ; Nair, M. ; Oliveira, D. ; Cajal, L.R. ; Knittel, R. ; Feick, C. ; Ringnér, M. ; Martin, M. ; Cirovic, B. ; Pires, C.F. ; Rosa, F.F. ; Sitnicka, E. ; Theis, F.J. ; Pereira, C.F.

A combinatorial transcription factor screening platform for immune cell reprogramming.
Nature 650, 1025-1034 (2026)

Uruci, S. ; Boer, D.E.C. ; Chrystal, P. ; Lalonde, M. ; Panagopoulos, A. ; Yakoub, G. ; Kirdök, I. ; Lint, K.d. ; Woude, M.v.d. ; Wendel, T.J. ; Brussee, S. ; Wondergem, A.P. ; Overbeek, N.v. ; Schotman, N. ; Lingeman, J. ; Ljungman, M. ; Vidal, M. ; Attikum, H.v. ; Vertegaal, A.C.O. ; Noordermeer, S.M. ; Wolthuis, R.M.F. ; Altmeyer, M. ; Hamperl, S. ; Tropepe, V. ; Berg, J.v.d. ; Heuvel, D.v.d. ; Luijsterburg, M.S.

CFAP20 salvages arrested RNAPII from the path of co-directional replisomes.
eLife 15:RP109269 (2026)

Proulx-Giraldeau, F. ; Gao, X. ; Chadha, Y. ; Xiao, J.Y. ; Schmoller, K.M. ; Skotheim, J.M. ; François, P.

Division asymmetry drives cell size variability in budding yeast.
PLoS Genet. 22:e1011836 (2026)

Thoma, F. ; Hagen, J. ; Rathberger, R. ; Padovani, F. ; Hörl, D. ; Schmoller, K.M. ; Osman, C.

Local mitochondrial physiology defined by mtDNA quality guides purifying selection.

Harada, M. ; Adam, J. ; Han, S. ; Shi, M. ; Ge, J. ; Lintelmann, J. ; Cecil, A. ; Zukunft, S. ; Prehn, C. ; Witting, M. ; Scheerer, M.F. ; Neschen, S. ; Irmler, M. ; Beckers, J. ; Adamski, J. ; Teupser, D. ; Linkohr, B. ; Gieger, C. ; Hrabě de Angelis, M. ; Peters, A. ; Wang-Sattler, R.

Urea cycle modulation by combined SGLT2 inhibitors and metformin.
Reproduction 171:xaag012 (2026)

Trigg, N.A. ; Mulhall, J.E. ; Nixon, B. ; Laurent, K. ; Pai, S. ; Smyth, S.P. ; Burke, N.D. ; Beckers, J. ; Bromfield, E.G. ; Karr, T.L. ; Lord, T. ; Pleuger, C. ; Schjenken, J.E. ; Hrabě de Angelis, M. ; Teperino, R. ; Skerrett-Byrne, D.A.

Curating fertility—proteomic remodelling of sperm during epididymal transit.
EBioMedicine 124:106144 (2026)

Förster, F. ; Horn, K. ; Pott, J. ; Delgado, G.E. ; Kleber, M.E. ; März, W. ; Moissl-Blanke, A.P. ; Silbernagel, G. ; Waldenberger, M. ; Grallert, H. ; Peters, A. ; Gieger, C. ; Baber, R. ; Kirsten, H. ; Loeffler, M. ; Isermann, B. ; Thiery, J. ; Kovacs, P. ; Tönjes, A. ; Stumvoll, M. ; Gylling, H. ; Kähönen, M. ; Lehtimäki, T. ; Mishra, P.P. ; Raitakari, O. ; Ceglarek, U. ; Scholz, M.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis of cholesterol synthesis intermediates identifies three associations for lanosterol.
Mol. Cell 86, 24-40.e10 (2026)

Nitsch, S. ; Coraor, A.E. ; Schauer, T. ; Wu, Y. ; Sun, J. ; Möritz, N. ; Funke, J.J. ; Nagpal, H. ; Chua, G.N.L. ; Battistini, F. ; Lauberth, S.M. ; Richard, E.M. ; Orozco, M. ; Liu, S. ; Desviat, L.R. ; Fierz, B. ; Dietz, H. ; Roeder, R.G. ; de Pablo, J.J. ; Schneider, R.

H4K16 acylations destabilize chromatin architecture and facilitate transcriptional response during metabolic perturbations.
In: Efficient Medical Artificial Intelligence. 2026. 289 - 298 (Lect. Notes Comput. Sc. ; 16318 LNCS)

Deutges, M. ; Yang, C. ; Salehi, R. ; Navab, N. ; Marr, C. ; Sadafi, A.

Neural Cellular Automata for Weakly Supervised Segmentation of White Blood Cells.
In: (Machine Learning in Medical Imaging). 2026. 583 - 593 (Lect. Notes Comput. Sc. ; 16241 LNCS)

Yang, C. ; Deutges, M. ; Liu, J. ; Li, H. ; Navab, N. ; Marr, C. ; Sadafi, A.

Attention Pooling Enhances NCA-Based Classification of Microscopy Images.
In:. 2026. 205 - 214 (Lect. Notes Comput. Sc. ; 16318 LNCS)

Ebrahimi, Z. ; Salehi, R. ; Navab, N. ; Marr, C. ; Sadafi, A.

Continual Multiple Instance Learning for Hematologic Disease Diagnosis.
Plant Sci. 362:112830 (2026)

Széles, E. ; Kondak, D. ; Da Silva, R.C. ; Szabados, L. ; Lindermayr, C. ; Kolbert, Z.

Genetic and bIOCHEMICAL approaches used FOR identification and MECHANISTIC characterization of NitriC oxide-RESPONSIVE plant genes.
In: (28th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2025, 23-27 September 2025, Daejeon). Gewerbestrasse 11, Cham, Ch-6330, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing Ag, 2026. 77-86 (Lect. Notes Comput. Sc. ; 15973 LNCS)

Dasdelen, M.F. ; Lim, H. ; Buck, M. ; Götze, K.S. ; Marr, C. ; Schneider, S.

CytoSAE: Interpretable Cell Embeddings for Hematology.
In: (28th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2025, 23-27 September 2025, Daejeon). 2026. 445-455 (Lect. Notes Comput. Sc. ; 15963 LNCS)

Zedda, L. ; Loddo, A. ; Di Ruberto, C. ; Marr, C.

RedDino: A Foundation Model for Red Blood Cell Analysis.

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