Dr. Caghan Kizil

Biography

Caghan Kizil obtained his PhD from Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, working on the injury-induced molecular pathways in caudal fin regeneration of zebrafish in Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard’s lab. He moved to Dresden for his post-doctoral work in DFG-Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD), at the TU Dresden in Michael Brand’s lab. He started working on adult zebrafish brain and radial glial cells and the work led to identification of particular molecular programs initiating and maintaining the special regenerative capacity of the neural progenitor cells of the adult zebrafish brain upon acute injuries. Since January 2014, he has a joint appointment in DZNE Dresden and CRTD as a Helmholtz Young Investigator research group leader. Kizil’s lab is interested in investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying the regenerative ability of the zebrafish brain upon various stimulations.

Research Interest

Our main goals at the DZNE in Dresden are  To learn from zebrafish how to enable the adult brains to better cope with neurodegenerative disease and regenerate To identify the molecular mechanisms of neural stem cell plasticity in adult zebrafish brain after various types of tissue damage or physiological stimulations