Detlev Arendt

Detlev Arendt studied Biology at the University of Freiburg, Germany. In 1994, as an undergraduate, he revived the classical concept that vertebrates inverted their dorsoventral axis during their evolution in a Scientific Correspondence to Nature. He obtained his Ph.D. in zoology in 1998 from the University of Freiburg, where he compared nervous system development of bilaterian animals. In 1999, he joined the lab of Joachim Wittbrodt at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, where he worked on eye development. After 3 years of postdoctoral training, he set up his laboratory at the EMBL in 2003 as a Group Leader in the Developmental Biology Unit. The Arendt laboratory has established the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii, a slow-evolving species, as a new marine molecular model for evolutionary and neurobiological research. It has also recently pioneered the comparison of cell types as a novel approach in the field of evolutionary developmental biology. Major achievements include the identification of vertebrate-type ciliary photoreceptors and of a hypothalamus-like territory in the annelid brain. Also, the Arendt laboratory elucidated an ancient nervous circuit driving phototaxis of the annelid larvae. In 2007, Detlev Arendt became Senior Scientist at the EMBL and was awarded an honorary professorship at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. In 2012, he was awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council.

BACK