Linda Odenthal-Hesse

Dr. Linda Odenthal-Hesse is a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, where she heads the Research Group Meiotic Recombination and Genome Instability. She has held this position since completing two postdoctoral roles focused on genome instability in autoimmune diseases and cancer-related DNA repair.

• Education
  • B.Sc. Biology, University of Cologne
  • M.Sc. Genetics, University of Cologne
  • Ph.D., University of Leicester (supervised by Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys)

Her research investigates de novo recombination processes in germ cells, focusing on meiotic recombination regulation, recombination hotspot dynamics, and long-term impacts on genome stability. She employs allele-specific PCR techniques and computational modeling to study these phenomena.

• Research focus areas
  • Meiotic recombination
  • Recombination hotspots
  • Gene conversion
  • Copy number variation
  • Speciation mechanisms
  • DNA repair defects in cancer
  • Genome instability in autoimmune diseases

Scientific honors include the Boehringer Ingelheim Doctoral Fellowship during her Ph.D. and the Odyssee Research Fellowship postdoctorally. Her work bridges molecular genetics, evolutionary biology, and computational genomics.