Counsel, coordinate, and support interdisciplinary activities

Our research activities

Computational disciplines, molecular biology and medicine converge in the emerging fields of computational biology and bioinformatics. The Loosolab, as part of the Bioinformatics Core Unit (BCU), an interdisciplinary group at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, supports experimental research activities by implementing and applying bioinformatics methods to find answers in complex datasets.

Our group brings together expertise from multiple fields and focuses mainly on applied bioinformatics. Modern molecular biology and medicine often attempts to screen large numbers of samples, patients and, more recently, also large numbers of individual cells. We work closely with the IT service group and our in-house sequencing facility to study such systems using so-called omics technologies. Scientists interested in monitoring the entire level of molecular organization, such as the genome, epigenome, transcriptome or proteome, seek our expertise to help frame their research question. Although analysis of data from one molecular level is mainly standardized, the comparison and correlation of datasets from multiple molecular levels is not trivial. We offer the integration and visualization of such datasets, make extensive use of pulic data and provide advanced data management and data sharing mechanisms. Additionally, our group spends a lot of effort to generate web-based portals and tools for easy data access. Our software solutions attempt to allow non computational scientists to formulate and answer research questions by querying their data in innovative ways. Read more about our software and database solutions.

Available technologies


Single-cell Multiome Sequencing › multiome-seq
Analyzing chromatin accessibility and RNA expression in parallel from single cells is an advanced approach to better understand regulatory circuits. read more››

Single-cell ATAC Sequencing › scATAC-seq
Analyzing chromatin accessibility in single cells is critical to better understand cellular compositions in developing, in adult and pathological tissues. Recent technical advances have scaled ATAC-seq down to the single cell level. This allows insights into dynamics of differentiation, cellular responses and epigenetics changes. read more››

Single-cell RNA Sequencing › scRNA-seq
Assessing gene expression in single cells is critical to better understand cellular behaviors and compositions in developing, adult and pathological tissues. Recent technical advances have enabled RNA sequencing in single cells, which led to insights into dynamics of differentiation, cellular responses and the stochastic nature of transcription. read more››

miRNA-Seq › Micro-RNA Expression
Small RNA sequencing is a standardized method to uncover expression changes of miRNA in tissue/cells of interest. Similar to RNA-seq, miRNAs are enriched, amplified and sequenced, followed by reference mapping and quantification read more››

RNA-Seq › Gene Expression
Gene and transcript level expression analysis represents the backbone for most omics research. read more››

HiC/T2C Sequencing › HiC/T2C-seq
The spatial organisation of chromatin is of high interest in the context of transcription and regulatory units. Topologically associating domains (TAD) are self-interacting genomic regions, wherein DNA is physically interacting. read more››

Exome Sequencing › Exome-seq
Genetic variants that change protein sequences can be responsible for many Mendelian and common polygenic diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease. Identification of such variants is paramount for clinical diagnosis, understanding the disease mechanism and patient treatment. Exome sequencing seeks to identify variants in all protein-coding genes but for a fraction of the costs of whole-genome sequencing. read more››

EPIC Arrays › EPIC Arrays
DNA methylation plays an important and dynamic role in regulating gene expression. As a cheap and fast alternative to costly genome-wide interrogation of methlyation status, MethylationEPIC arrays are targeted to relevant features of the genome, e.g. genes, CpG islands and enhancer regions, and allow epigenome wide association studies in high-throughput. read more››

ChIP-Seq / ATAC-Seq › Protein Binding / Accessible Chromatin
Genome wide screens for Protein-DNA binding events and chromatin accessibility offer a glimpse into genomic and epigenomic regulation. read more››