Mages Lab - Research
- Research
The stage for life is space: proteins fold into complex spatial structures, cells migrate or keep static neighborship relations, whole organisms move through or grow in their environment. But they also live in internal high-dimensional feature or state spaces, defined e.g. by molecular modifications, expression patterns, or pathological states. It is essential to systematically analyze the interrelations between position and internal spaces to approach a more fundamental understanding of life. Therefore, the research focus of our group lies on the joint analysis of the rich data about position and internal spaces from molecular to tissue scale, which can be generated with state-of-the-art experimental spatial omics methods. To this end we work at the intersection of bioinformatics, big data, high performance computing, and theoretical physics to design and implement efficient and scalable methods to extract quantitative and biologically meaningful insights from spatial omics data in a systematic way. To translate fundamental insights into advances in the understanding of pressing questions about specific biological systems, we collaborate with partners in basic and clinical research.