Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Theoretische Systembiologie
Leutragraben 1
D-07743 Jena
Germany
Phone: +49-3641-949596
Fax: +49-3641-946452
Room 15N07, Floor 15

Curriculum Vitae

• 2003 Abitur at the “Otto-Schott-Gymnasium Jena”

• 2003 – 2009 Diploma Student in Bioinformatics at the “Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena”

• 2008 – 2009 Diploma Thesis at the Bio Systems Analysis Research Group at the “Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena”

• since April 2009 Ph.D. Student in Prof. Schuster's group at the FSU Jena, Ph.D. fellowship IMPRS of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena

Research Interests

Cooperation, mutualism and altruism are very common in nature. However, this cannot be explained by natural selection in the classical sense. Cooperative and altruistic behaviour would lower the fitness of the acting individual and hence evolution would select against it.

Therefore, I am interested in the following questions: How did cooperation evolve? Which ecological factors favour or inhibit the evolution of cooperation?

A further interesting aspect is the evolution of cheaters. Individuals which do not invest in the cooperation could exploit the cooperation of others. Do such individuals, called “cheaters”, evolve? If yes, are they able to cause the whole population to crash? What is the maximum percentage of cheaters for the population to be stable?

How will a population of cooperators react if one cheater immigrates?

To answer such questions, I am analysing a model system of cooperating bacteria using a cellular automaton, metabolic pathway analysis, evolutionary game theory and ordinary differential equations.

Further research projects at our group.

Cooperation

• Dr. Christian Kost's group at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena

• Dr. Jan-Ulrich Kreft's group at the Centre for Systems Biology, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, UK

• I am a member of the research group Evolutionary Game Theory and Agent Based Modelling and of the research group Theoretical Systems Biology.

Teaching

• Summerterm 2012: Tutorial “Einführung in die Bioinformatik” for students of Biochemistry/Bachelor

• Winterterm 2011 – 2012: Tutorial “3D-Strukturen biologischer Makromoleküle” for students of Biochemistry/Bachelor and Biology/Bachelor

• Summerterm 2011: Tutorial “Einführung in die Bioinformatik” for students of Biochemistry/Bachelor

• Winterterm 2010 – 2011:Tutorial “3D-Strukturen biologischer Makromoleküle” for students of Bioinformatics/Diplom

• Summerterm 2010: Tutorial “Einführung in die Bioinformatik” for students of Biochemistry/Bachelor

• Winterterm 2009 – 2010: Tutorial “Optimalitätsprinzipien in der Evolution” for students of Bioinformatics/Diplom

Publications

• K. Bohl, L. F. de Figueiredo, O. Hädicke, S. Klamt, C. Kost, S. Schuster, C. Kaleta. CASOP GS: Computing intervention strategies targeted at production improvement in genome-scale metabolic networks. In: Proceedings of the 25th German Conference on Bioinformatics (eds. D. Schomburg, A. Grote), Gesellschaft f. Informatik, Bonn, 2010, 71-80 (ISSN: 1617-5468)

Talks

• JCB workshop “Nucleotides – Networks – Novelties. Understanding Evolution Beyond Darwin and Haeckel”, Jena/Germany 28 – 29 March 2011. Rational redesign of Escherichia coli for overproduction of amino acids aiming at mutualistic cross-feeding. Katrin Bohl*, Luís Filipe de Figueiredo, Oliver Hädicke, Steffen Klamt, Christian Kost, Stefan Schuster and Christoph Kaleta.

• German Conference on Bioinformatics, Braunschweig/Germany 20 – 22 September 2010. CASOP GS: Computing intervention strategies targeted at production improvement in genome-scale metabolic networks. K. Bohl*, L.F. de Figueiredo, O. Hädicke, S. Klamt, C. Kost, S. Schuster and C. Kaleta.

Poster

• 13th Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB), Tübingen/Germany 20 – 25 August 2011. Pande S.*, Merker H., Bohl K., Schröter A., Schuster S., & Kost C. Effect of spatial structure on the spread of cheaters in synthetically designed mutualistic interactions.

• Gordon Research Conference on Microbial Population Biology, Andover/USA 17 – 22 July 2011. Pande S., Merker, H., Bohl, K., Kaleta, C., Reichelt, M., Schuster, S. & Kost, C.*. Rational design of synthetic interactions to study the evolution of mutualisms.

• Systems Biology of Microorganisms, Paris/France 22 – 24 March 2010. K. Bohl*, L.F. de Figueiredo, J. Behre, C. Kost, S. Schuster, C. Kaleta et al. Computing elementary flux modes in genome-scale metabolic networks: Recent advances and biotechnological applications.

• JSMC/JCB Workshop “Microbes, Models & Methods”, Jena/Germany 9 – 10 March 2010. Katrin Bohl*, Anja Schröter, Christian Kost, Stefan Schuster. Mutualistic interactions among amino acid exchanging bacteria studied by evolutionary game theory.

* presenting author