Axel Künstner graduated in Computer Sciences and received his PhD at the Uppsala University (Sweden) working with Hans Ellegren. During this time his research was focused on genomics and transcriptomics in birds. Afterwards, he moved to the Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen to work on the guppy genome project where he combined population genetic approaches and whole genome sequencing to investigate selection due to natural barriers in guppies.
In autumn 2014, he became a member at the Lübeck Institute for Experimental Dermatology and is working in close collaboration with the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön. His main focus was to analyse microbiome data. Among others, he participates in projects investigating differences in skin microbiota in bullous pemphigoid patients compared to healthy controls.
Currently, he is part of the Group for Medical Systems Biology lead by Prof. Hauke Busch.
Contact details
Phone: +49 451 3101 8475
Fax: +49 451 3101 8404
Email: Axel.Künstner(at)uni-luebeck.de
Selected publications
Künstner et al., The Genome of the Trinidadian Guppy, Poecilia reticulata, and Variation in the Guanapo Population. PLoS One. 2016
Künstner et al., Significant selective constraint at 4-fold degenerate sites in the avian genome and its consequence for detection of positive selection. Genome Biol Evol. 2011
Smeds et al., ConDeTri-- a content dependent read trimmer for Illumina data. PLoS One. 2011
Künstner et al., Evolutionary constraint in flanking regions of avian genes. Mol Biol Evol. 2011
Künstner et al., Comparative genomics based on massive parallel transcriptome sequencing reveals patterns of substitution and selection across 10 bird species. Mol Ecol. 2010
Wolf et al., Nonlinear dynamics of nonsynonymous (dN) and synonymous (dS) substitution rates affects inference of selection. Genome Biol Evol. 2009
