Marcus Krantz

About Marcus Krantz

Marcus Krantz is a researcher in Systems Biology at the School of Medical Sciences and the Inflammatory Response and Infection Susceptibility Centre (iRiSC) since 2022. He was previously a junior group leader at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he developed rxncon, the reaction-contingency language for building and modelling large-scale signal transduction networks. His research focusses on understanding how cells process information and how they use the information to reach decisions, for example to divide or to halt the cell division cycle depending on internal and external signals.

Research

Cells monitor their internal state and perceive their surrounding through signal transduction pathways, which integrate these different cues to control cell behaviour. Hence, cellular signal transduction is critical for almost all aspects of life, from developmental processes to the constant maintenance of body homeostasis. At iRiSC, we are particularly interested in understanding how signal transduction controls the immune response and inflammatory processes, and to understand how differences in those functions differ between healthy and pathological inflammation.

Inflammation is an essential protective mechanism that occurs in response to pathogen exposure or tissue damage, resulting in increased recruitment and activation of immune cells in the damaged or infected tissue that is necessary for recovery and healing. However, many non-infectious diseases are associated with pathological inflammation, as in allergy, autoimmune diseases and as a side effect of e.g. diabetes or cancer. Normally, inflammation is initiated by the detection of pathogens or tissue damage, but erroneous signal transduction can lead to spontaneous or hyper-activation of the inflammatory response, for example through genetic polymorphisms that increase the risk of spontaneous inflammation.

We want to understand how signal transduction shapes inflammation in response to different triggers, and how this response differs between individuals. To this end, we use a systems biology approach: We assemble knowledge on the individual components of these signalling processes into a network, akin to a road map for inflammation control. The focus of my work is on building and analysing these network models. The goal is to be able to explain how cells react to different triggers, why different persons react differently, and to predict the effect of a specific treatment in a specific person.

Teaching

Marcus Krantz gives lectures in systems biology and trains students to use systems biology approaches to go from knowledge on details to a holistic understanding of a system. He acts as a PBL teacher and as coordinator for the 5th semester of the medical program at the School of Medical Sciences. He has also been a teacher at several high-profile international training courses in systems biology.