Michael Ratz, PhD
Group Leader
Michael Ratz is a group leader in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. He started his lab in 2023 to study the molecular mechanisms of mammalian brain development in health and disease using cutting edge tools in molecular and synthetic biology, single-cell and spatial transcriptomics as well as bioinformatics.
Michael conducted postdoctoral research with Professor Jonas Frisén (Karolinska Institute, Sweden) and Professor Joakim Lundeberg (KTH, Sweden), where he developed "next-generation clonal tracing" which, for the first time, combined cellular barcoding in vivo with single-cell and spatial transcriptomics to reveal the developmental origins of the mammalian brain at the level of single cells. Next-generation clonal tracing has been used to study the lineage connections in the neural crest and contributed to the identification of long-term heritable gene expression in clonal lineages of the human immune system and the mouse brain .
During his postdoc, Michael has also been a visiting researcher in the lab of Professor Karl Deisseroth (Stanford University, USA) where he got acquainted with 3D intact-tissue RNA-sequencing (STARmap) and mouse models of autism.
Michael received a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Göttingen where he worked in the labs of Professor Stefan Jakobs and Professor Stefan W. Hell at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. During his PhD studies, Michael contributed to the development of new fluorescent proteins and pioneered the use of CRISPR-based genome editing to study nanoscale protein dynamics at endogenous expression levels in human cells.
Michael obtained a MSc in molecular biology from the "International Max Planck Research School" at the University of Göttingen (Germany) working with Professor Dirk Görlich on nuclear pore targets of viral 2A proteases. Michael received a BSc in biochemistry from the University of Leipzig (Germany) working in the lab of Professor Mario Mörl on the bacterial TPP riboswitch.
Michael conducted postdoctoral research with Professor Jonas Frisén (Karolinska Institute, Sweden) and Professor Joakim Lundeberg (KTH, Sweden), where he developed "next-generation clonal tracing" which, for the first time, combined cellular barcoding in vivo with single-cell and spatial transcriptomics to reveal the developmental origins of the mammalian brain at the level of single cells. Next-generation clonal tracing has been used to study the lineage connections in the neural crest and contributed to the identification of long-term heritable gene expression in clonal lineages of the human immune system and the mouse brain .
During his postdoc, Michael has also been a visiting researcher in the lab of Professor Karl Deisseroth (Stanford University, USA) where he got acquainted with 3D intact-tissue RNA-sequencing (STARmap) and mouse models of autism.
Michael received a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Göttingen where he worked in the labs of Professor Stefan Jakobs and Professor Stefan W. Hell at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. During his PhD studies, Michael contributed to the development of new fluorescent proteins and pioneered the use of CRISPR-based genome editing to study nanoscale protein dynamics at endogenous expression levels in human cells.
Michael obtained a MSc in molecular biology from the "International Max Planck Research School" at the University of Göttingen (Germany) working with Professor Dirk Görlich on nuclear pore targets of viral 2A proteases. Michael received a BSc in biochemistry from the University of Leipzig (Germany) working in the lab of Professor Mario Mörl on the bacterial TPP riboswitch.
