Max Planck Institute for Medical Research | About the Institute

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The Institute works on fundamental biological issues that are of long-term medical significance. One main area of research is neurophysiology: What are the changes in the brain that underlie processes like learning and remembering? What does the three-dimensional circuit diagram of the billions of nerve cells in the brain look like? How can the processes in nerve cells in the living brain be made visible through new microscopic methods? The scientists also work to understand how perceptions of odours are stored in the brain, and how networks are formed which are capable of adapting to stress. A second main area of research at the Institute concerns the complex chemical reactions in living cells. These are performed by enzymes, and the research aims to determine the atomic structure of important enzyme molecules.

The Institute was opened in 1930 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research, and was re-founded as a Max Planck Institute in 1948. Its original goal was to apply the methods of physics and chemistry to basic medical research, and it included departments of Chemistry, Physiology, and Biophysics. In the 1960s, new developments in biology were reflected with the establishment of the Department of Molecular Biology. Toward the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s, investigations began into the specific functions of muscle and nerve cells. New departments were established in Cell Physiology (1989-2007), Molecular Cell Research (1992-1999), Molecular Neurobiology (1995), Biomedical Optics (1999) and Biomolecular Mechanisms (2002). The Max Planck Research Groups for Ion Channel Structure (1997-2003), Developmental Genetics (1999-2004), Behavioural Neurophysiology (2008) and Developmental Genetics of the nervous system (2008) were also founded.

Since its foundation, five Nobel Prize laureates have worked at the institute: Otto Meyerhof (Physiology or Medicine), Richard Kuhn (Chemistry), Walther Bothe (Physics), Rudolf Mößbauer (Physics), and Bert Sakmann (Physiology or Medicine).

The Institute currently has three departments and two Max Planck Research Groups. The Department of Molecular Neurobiology focuses on the analysis and altering of mouse genes that are responsible for rapid signaling in the brain; the purpose is to investigate which brain capacities are inherited and which are learned. The Department of Biomedical Optics studies the activity of groups of nerve cells in tissue preparations and in laboratory animals with the use and continued development of multiquantum microscopy. The research in the Department of Biomolecular Mechanisms is aimed at establishing the molecular basis of model reactions, using the methods of biophysics and structural biology.

The Max Planck Research Group Behavioural Neurophysiology (Dr. Andreas T. Schaefer) aims to understand how complex behaviour emerges from the properties of molecules, cells and ensembles of cells. The Max Planck Research Group Developmental Genetics of the Nervous System (Dr. Soojin Ryu) aims to understand the molecular mechanism of neuronal circuit formation by studying the development of the hypothalamus.

The Emeritus Group Biophysics (Kenneth C. Holmes) focuses on structures of actin and myosin at atomic resolution.

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