Funding by the Marga and Walter Boll Foundation

Peter Tessarz investigates the ageing of the liver

Peter Tessarz, head of the research group "Chromatin and Ageing", is funded by the Marga and Walter Boll Foundation. The research group investigates how chromatin structure and gene activity change during the ageing process. The money will go towards a research project on the ageing of liver cells.

The liver can regenerate into old age and remains amazingly efficient. Therefore, it is particularly interesting for ageing research how the cells of the liver change with age. Peter Tessarz is researching in particular how the epigenetics of the cells change. Epigenetics describes changes in genetic information that do not change the sequence of the genes themselves, but influence their activity.

"In the project funded by the Marga and Walter Boll Foundation, we are looking at the level of single cells to see how genes are switched on and off with age," explains Tessarz. "I am very happy about the funding as it will allow me to further develop this project."

About Peter Tessarz

Tessarz studied biochemistry at the University of Witten/Herdecke. After his doctoral thesis and his time as a postdoc at the Centre for Molecular Biology Heidelberg (ZMBH), he moved to the University of Cambridge, UK, as a research associate. Since 2014, he has been a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne.

About the Marga and Walter Boll Foundation

The Marga and Walter Boll Foundation promotes science & research as well as social projects & causes. It promotes basic and applied research, especially in the fields of technical sciences, economics and social sciences, medical and health sciences, paediatrics and biological and natural sciences. The founder, Marga Boll, widow of Walter Boll, co-founder of Boll & Kirch Filterbau GmbH, who died at an early age, established the foundation in 1995.

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