The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) will be funding 14 new Priority Programmes beginning in 2004. The DFG's Senate selected the new programmes from 58 proposals. The programmes will receive a total of 38 million over the first two years. This increases the number of Priority Programmes funded by the DFG in the coming year to 112. The "Priority Programmes" funding instrument aims to bring together and support researchers from various research institutes and fields in a project on a defined topic. Priority Programmes generally run for a period of six years.

The new programmes in detail:

Life Sciences

The Priority Programme "Colonisation and Infection by Human Pathogenic Fungi" studies the role of fungal infections which can trigger life-threatening infections, above all, in humans with weak immune systems. The research focuses on the processes which cause a normally harmless fungus to become virulent, its infection mechanisms, how its spreads and the way in which the pathogens interact with the patient's immune system. In this work, the sequencing completed for the genomes of a number of fungi that represent a danger to humans offers an outstanding starting point for using functional genome analysis to examine the questions that have been raised. (Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Axel Brakhage, University of Hannover)

The Priority Programme "The Significance of Neuroglia for the Formation, Function and Plasticity of Synapses" examines glia cells, a cell type of the human nervous system which, in the past, was thought to play only a passive role in neuronal information processing. More recent findings, however, prove that glia cells not only act as the "adhesive" for the nervous system, but also, through their dynamic interaction with neurons, contribute significantly to processing information in the brain. This programme focuses on the dialogue between neurons and glia cells and also aims to contribute to exten
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Contact: Dr. Rembert Unterstell
rembert.unterstell@dfg.de
49-228-885-2275
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
26-May-2003

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