Research

Centrum für Biotechnologie CeBiTec

The Center for Biotechnology – CeBiTec – is one of the largest faculty-spanning central academic institutions at Bielefeld University. Its purpose is to bundle the biotechnological activities and research projects at the university, to foster cross-linking of research approaches and technologies from different research fields and to develop innovative projects within its two main research areas: Large Scale Genomics and Big Data Bioinformatics and Metabolic Engineering of Unicellular Systems and Bioproduction.

The availability of comprehensive technological infrastructure as being provided by CeBiTec’s Technology Platforms is crucial for a successful scientific work. Academic training of graduates is fostered by the Graduate Center offering high-level PhD programs.

Joint Institute for Individualisation in a Changing Environment (JICE)

Im JICE soll im interdisziplinären Diskurs von Natur-, Geistes und Gesellschaftswissenschaften Individualisierung in sich ändernden UmWelten systemisch untersucht werden.

JICE baut auf dem Transregio SFB-TRR 212 auf, in dem seit 2018 Biolog*innen und Philosoph*innen eine neue Synthese zur Individualisierung erarbeiten. Beteiligt an JICE sind das Institut für Evolution und Biodiversität sowie die Verhaltensbiologie die Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, ebenso die Verhaltensforschung, die Chemische Ökologie und die Verhaltensökologie der Universität Bielefeld.

"A Novel Synthesis of Individualisation across Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution: Niche Choice, Niche Conformance, Niche Construction"

The DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre at Bielefeld University and University of Münster combines behavioural, evolutionary and theoretical biology and ecology in an etho-eco-evo approach. It aims to develop a novel synthesis of individualisation that also takes into account that the environmental conditions change throughout an animal's lifetime.

The central research goal is to redefine the niche concept on the individual level. By doing so, we want to gain a comprehensive understanding of how individual phenotypes interact with their environment and what the ensuing consequences for ecological and evolutionary processes are. We hypothesise that, across taxa, the interaction between the individualised phenotype and the environment results in individualised niches via three mechanisms of adjustment and adaptation: niche choice, niche conformance and niche construction (NC³).

“Ecology and Evolution of Intraspecific Chemodiversity of Plants"

The DFG-funded Research Unit “Ecology and Evolution of Intraspecific Chemodiversity of Plants” consists of ten research projects in nine laboratories across Germany. By combining field and laboratory studies with metabolomics, transcriptomics, genetic tools, statistical data analysis and modelling, the researchers aim to understand causes and consequences of plant chemodiversity and elucidate the impacts thereof on the interactions of plants with their biotic environment. Furthermore, they want to identify general principles, which hold across different species, and develop meaningful measures to describe the fascinating diversity of defence chemicals in plants.