Investigation into gene regulatory networks governing the development and maintenance of the planarian reproductive system

Abstract

During my time in Germany, I had the pleasure to meet, work or simply be around multiple persons who made me grow both scientifically as well as personally. I owe them a debt of gratitude as this thesis would not have come to fruition without them.First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Jochen Rink to for having given me the opportunity to work with him. Your passion and excitement for science is something amazing that inspired me all along my thesis. Your resilience in the face of hardships that came with the lab move and the pandemic is admirable. I would like to thank my TAC members Prof. Dr. Argyris Papantonis and Dr. Nico Posnien for their support and constructive feedback right from the first committee meetings. Your encouragements are something that kept me going.Many thanks go to past and present lab members of the Rink lab. First, I would like to thank Mario Ivankovic. You acted as a second supervisor to me and helped me both on the wet-and dry-lab side of my work. I will always remember fondly of our late evening 'last' experiments/analysis before calling it a day. I also thank you for your friendship. Goettingen would have been much more boring without you. I thank Dr. Grohme and Dr. Rosanski for their infinite knowledge in molecular biology/biochemistry and bioinformatics respectively. I would like to thank Dr. Vu for her kindness and patience to teach me how to perform whole-mount in situs. Furthermore, I thank Dr. Boothe for his impeccable professionalism and indispensable knowledge on microscopy. I thank you also for inspiring me to finally do a marathon. Speaking about running, I thank Dr. Vila-Farré for the many running sessions we did together and which brought me a lot of joy. I also thank you for your expertise in planarian biology, which was critical to me especially during the last part of my thesis. My gratitude goes also to the scientific support staff of the department of tissue dynamics and regeneration. The lab would not be running without you. My special thanks go to Delia and Fruzsina for being great co-workers. I would also like to thank all the present lab members for making the lab a pleasant work space (shout-out to Jun-Ru, Ziheng, Annabel, Ludwik and Jeremias).I thank my friends from Dresden, with whom I started this adventure and had to leave to continue my research in Göttingen. I thank the friends I made in Göttingen through the beer hours and various other events (shout-out to Jakob and Amrutha). I also thank my friends from Belgium with whom I still feel as close despite the distance.I would like to thank my family for their support. In particular, I thank my mother for her unconditional dedication to her children. Finally, I would like to thank Sonali, with whom I started this chapter of my life. I am a better person because of you.