The Czech embryologist Zuzana Holubcová studies fascinating processes occurring inside the human egg cell before and during fertilization, where human live begins. Her research from Cambridge University in the UK and Masaryk University in Brno gained a lot of attention thanks to its ambition to answer questions like: Why do only 30% of human embryos succeed? What influences our ability to have children? or on the most common level: What are the key principles driving the process of the creation of life?

Science Café is a series of popular science presentations and talks by the best Czech scientists of today. It is organized by the Czech Centre Berlin, the Czexperts Network and the Neuron Foundation, Prague. Each year the Neuron Foundation gives out the Neuron Impulse grants to outstanding basic research projects and celebrates the best scientists with the Neuron Awards.

The talk and the discussion will be in English.

Admission free

Zuzana Holubcová focuses in her research on human egg biology. She was the first scientist in the world who filmed the maturation of a human egg and discovered that causes of infertility could be revealed by the way of the division of the human egg. Her investigation aimed to explore how the molecular sphere is organized on a molecular spindle which divides the human egg chromosomes. Holubcová discovered that there are significant differences between human and mouse eggs. Human eggs miss centrosome and the spindle is made directly from chromosomes. The process is therefore very slow and the resulting spindle is unstable. Disorders of the molecular spindle are the most common cause of female infertility.

This young scientist contributed to a better understanding of the causes of female infertility and proved that the timing of artificial fertilization is highly important. Results of her unique research were published by one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals Science. She gained the Neuron Impulse grant in 2016.

Zuzana graduated in 2006 from the Faculty of Pharmacy at University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Brno and earned Ph.D. title at the Faculty of Medicine of Masaryk University in Brno in 2010. She conducted postdoctoral research in MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge where she observed the process of human egg cell division. From 2015 she has been working at the Department of Histology and Embryology at the Faculty of Medicine of Masaryk University in Brno.

Zeit & Ort

28.03.2018  | 19:00

Tschechisches Zentrum
Wilhelmstraße 44 / Eingang Mohrenstraße
10117 Berlin

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