Julius Brennecke


Julius Brennecke is a German molecular biologist and geneticist. He is a Senior Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology. of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

Education and career

Julius Brennecke studied biology at Heidelberg University.. During his diploma thesis he focused on the tandem affinity purification of protein complexes in Drosophila,In his PhD-thesis he specialized on microRNAs and their regulatory targets in Drosophila.
He obtained his PhD degree in 2005 from Heidelberg University jointly with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. After a short postdoctoral stay at EMBL, he carried out his postdoctoral training with Gregory Hannon at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. In 2009 he became group leader at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, part of the Vienna BioCenter, where he was appointed Senior Group Leader in 2014. Brennecke is a permanent EMBO member and editorial board member of the Journal of Cell Biology

Research

In his research Brennecke focuses on small regulatory RNA pathways and their role in suppressing transposable elements and inducing heterochromatin formation in animals. His research group focuses on the model organism Drosophila melanogaster and applies diverse approaches, such as genetics, genomics, biochemistry, imaging technologies, and computational biology.

Selected publications

Hayashi, R., Schnabl, J., Handler, D., Mohn, F., Ameres, SL., Brennecke, J.: Nature  DOI: 10.1038/nature20162
Andersen, PR., Tirian, L., Vunjak, M., Brennecke, J.: Nature  DOI: 10.1038/nature23482
Mohn, F., Handler, D., Brennecke, J.: Science  DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa1039

Awards and honours