Sebastian Kirchner

Biography

Sebastian Kirchner is currently working as a Research Associate in the Department of Infection, Immunity & Inflammation

Research Interest

Malaria is caused by parasitic unicellular organisms of the Plasmodium genus, which alternate between their mammalian host and mosquito vector. Despite global efforts to improve prevention and treatment of Plasmodium infections malaria is still a major threat to human health and represents an immense economic burden for developing countries. In 2015 malaria accounted for approx. 212 million cases and about 429,000 death world-wide, mostly affecting children under the age of 5 and pregnant woman in Sub-Saharan Africa. My research focuses on the role of histone modifications during Plasmodium life-cycle progression and development within the mammalian host, with a special focus on gametocytogenesis. Gametocytes are the only stage within the parasite life-cycle which can be transmitted from the mammalian host to the mosquito vector, representing a bottleneck in the life-cycle and hence an ideal target for pharmacological intervention. Utilizing state of the art next-generation sequencing based technologies (RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq) combined with biochemical and cell biological methods my research aims to elucidate the role of histone modifiers in the regulation of chromatin remodelling and gene expression as well as in particular their role in the commitment to gametocytogenesis.