Curriculum vitae

Born 15.09.1976 in Munich
School in France and Germany
Biology study, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen (Diploma thesis 08/2003)
PhD at the University of Potsdam 2004-2007, Title of the thesis “The cAMP-mediated activation of the vacuolar H⁺-ATPase in the salivary glands of the blowfly Calliphora vicina”
Post doc in the Galizia lab since April 2007

In the honeybee antennal lobe, odours are coded by complex across glomerular activation pattern. Glomeruli receive input from olfactory sensory neurons and are connected by local interneurons. Projection neurons, the output neurons of the antennal lobe, relay their information to higher-order brain centres. I’m interested in the role of different neurotransmitters and of the second messenger cascades that they activate in information transfer, processing and learning in the honeybee antennal lobe. My current work focuses on the question how the complex odour-specific activation patterns are generated at the AL output. Using selective fura-backfill staining of projection neurons combined with optical imaging methods, I examine the effect of various neurotransmitters and their antagonists on projection neuron activity and odour-induced glomerular activation patterns. These data will increase knowledge about how olfactory information is relayed to the projection neurons and give insight in the network involved in that process. This project is part of the Bernstein cooperation “Olfactory coding” (BMBF grant 576/07).

Martin Strauch, Julia Rein, Christian Lutz,  C. Giovanni Galizia:(2013)
Signal extraction from movies of honeybee brain activity by convex analysis: The ImageBee plugin for KNIME,
extended journal version, BMC Bioinformatics 14: (Suppl 18):S4 

Rein J, Voss M, Blenau W, Walz B, Baumann O (2008)
Hormone-induced assembly and activation of V-ATPase in blowfly salivary glands is mediated by protein kinase A.
Am J Physiol Cell Physiol. 294(1):C56-65.

Dames P, Zimmermann B, Schmid R, Rein J, Voss M, Schewe B, Walz B, Baumann O (2006)
cAMP regulates plasma membrane vacuolar-type H+-ATPase assembly and activity in blowfly salivary glands.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 103(10):3926-31.

Rein J, Zimmermann B, Hille C, Lang I, Walz B, Baumann O (2006)
cAMP regulates plasma membrane vacuolar-type H+-ATPase assembly and activity in blowfly salivary glands.
Fluorescence measurements of serotonin-induced V-ATPase-dependent pH changes at the luminal surface in salivary glands of the blowfly Calliphora vicina.
J Exp Biol. 209(Pt 9):1716-24.

Strauch M, Rein J & Galizia CG
Pattern mining in spontaneous background activity from the honeybee antennal lobe.
Bernstein Conference on Computational Neuroscience 2009 in Frankfurt, Germany.

Strauch, M., Rein, J. & Galizia, C.G.
Towards understanding olfactory information processing in the antennal lobes of Apis mellifera. 3^rd Bernstein symposium for computational neuroscience (2007)

Rein, J. & Galizia, C.G.
The effect of neurotransmitters on projection neuron activity in the antennal lobe of the honeybee Apis mellifera. 28^th Blankenese Conference „Sensory Signaling and Information Processing“. (2008)

Klinke, I., Rein, J., Schmuker, M., Strauch, M., Nowotny, T., Galizia,C.G. & Menzel, R.
The Bernstein Partner Project “Olfactory Coding”: A joint effort to reveal the neural basis of olfaction. 4^th Bernstein symposium for computational neuroscience (2008)

BMBF project "Olfactory Coding":

We are investigating the properties of the olfactory code in honeybees with a joint theoretical and experimental approach.

Uni Konstanz:   Martin Strauch
FU Berlin:   Ina Klinke ,  Randolf Menzel ,  Michael Schmuker
University of Sussex:  Thomas Nowotny