Andreas Janshoff
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Biophysical Journal Editor, Membranes

What are you currently working on that excites you?

Currently, my group is working on exploring the nature of active matter at different length scales, from subcellular networks to tissue-like cell ensembles. This is done in the context of wound healing and particularly addresses the entanglement of mechanical properties with pivotal cellular processes such as adhesion, motility, growth, differentiation, and development.

Research on natural living systems is closely linked to our work on artificial model systems, which we design to mimic essential features of living cells. Compartments are formed from tailored membranes that enable them to mirror certain aspects of living cells. In this way, we are trying to create socalled “living foams” consisting of interconnected contractile microcompartments that in the future could serve as “living band-aids” in the early process of wound healing.

The third cornerstone of our research is dedicated to the quantitative understanding of membrane fusion processes by creating model systems that allow us to study specific aspects of this crucial step in neuronal information transmission.

What has been your biggest “aha” moment in science?

Interestingly, in my scientific life, there has never been such a singularity where I have felt that we can “rip the mask off of nature,” but rather there have been these many, yet rare, moments in which the models and the overarching working hypothesis suddenly agree with the actual experiments. Much more often, however, the opposite was true, that the experiments tended to shatter the models and the associated hypothesis, but that’s the point where the research really starts to get interesting, and where you hit on something new.