The role of human and Drosophila NXF proteins in nuclear mRNA ...

Acknowledgements
First of all, I want to thank Dr Elisa Izaurralde for giving me the opportunity to work in her
lab. I would like to thank her for excellent scientific guidance and all her enthusiasm and
constant support throughout the last years. She was always there to listen to problems,
discuss results and cheer me up when things were not working in the way they should.
I am very grateful to Prof. Dr Ulrich Scheer for the supervision of this thesis as a member
of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Würzburg. He and Dr Iain Mattaj were
members of my thesis advisory committee at EMBL. I would like to thank them for their
interest in my work, and for many critical discussions and good suggestions. I would also
like to thank Dr Matthias Hentze for readily agreeing to evaluate this thesis.
A special "thank you" goes to all past and present members of the Izaurralde lab. In
particular, I would like to thank all the current lab members Daniel Forler, Kerstin Gari,
David Gatfield, Andreas Lingel, Michaela Rode, Leonie Unterholzner and Wei Yao for
creating such a good working atmosphere with many interesting discussions and great fun.
I would also like to acknowledge Isabelle Braun for many fruitful collaborations, and
Leonie and Kerstin for comments on this thesis.
Many thanks to the EMBL photolab and the EMBL computer and networking group for
the friendly assistance with various layout and software problems.
Mein größter Dank gilt jedoch meiner Familie. Meine Eltern haben mich stets in allem,
was ich getan habe, mit allen Kräften unterstützt. Mein Bruder Jens hat mir in
wissenschaftlichen und privaten Angelegenheiten mit Rat und Tat zur Seite gestanden.
Vielen Dank dafür! Vielen Dank auch an Michael, der mich in den letzten Jahren bei
Höhenflügen begleitet und vor Sturzflügen bewahrt hat.