Computational Biology
Platform News
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Oct 15, 2025 Video: DNA rhythms orchestrate gene activity across development |
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Feb 26, 2025 Charting gene secrets: New insights into genetic switches |
Resources
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Computational Biology
Exploiting bioinformatics approaches, tools and databases efficiently
In addition to heading the Computational Biology platform, Michael Stadler is an FMI staff scientist and pursues independent research within the institute and with external collaborators.
Modern biomedical research produces vast amounts of data, and the number of bioinformatics approaches and databases increases at a high rate. We collaborate with FMI scientists to exploit these tools efficiently. Our strongest expertise lies in the analysis and interpretation of high-throughput sequencing data such as data from (single cell) RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, Bis-seq and HiC experiments.
We also provide a bioinformatics help-desk and a computational infrastructure for biologists. Our aim is to train young researchers to become competent and independent. Therefore, we focus on providing solutions based on free and open-source software, allowing the scientists to continue their own bioinformatics research even after leaving the FMI.
We are members of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, and in collaboration with the Bioinformatics core of the Department of Biomedicine we teach courses and lectures at the University of Basel.
Tools and software
- QuasR: Quantification and Annotation of Short reads in R
Bioconductor landing page | PubMed | free HTML | free PDF
GitHub page - Rbowtie: R wrapper around the popular bowtie short read aligner
Bioconductor landing page | PubMed | free HTML | free PDF
GitHub page - Rhisat2: R wrapper around the hisat2 aligner
Bioconductor landing page | GitHub page - MethylSeekR: Identification of active regulatory regions from DNA methylation data
Bioconductor landing page | PubMed | free HTML | free PDF - monaLisa: Motif Enrichment Analysis and Visualization
GitHub page - griph: Graph Inference of Population Heterogeneity
GitHub page - swissknife: Handy code shared in the FMI CompBio group
GitHub page - alevinQC: Generation of QC and summary reports for Alevin output
Bioconductor landing page | GitHub page - ExploreModelMatrix: Interactive exploration of design matrices in R
Bioconductor landing page | PubMed | free full text | GitHub page - eisaR: Exon-Intron Split Analysis and methods for extracting transcript coordinates and sequences
Bioconductor landing page | GitHub page
Contact
Michael Stadler: Platform head, computational biol & group leader
Komarov PA, Bammer PC, Liang CY, Hotz HR, Fanourgakis G, Chun S, Kohler H, Buchholz TO, Spetz JF, Peters AHFM (2026) The eutherian-specific histone H3.4 promotes germ cell development and reproductive fitness.
Nat Commun. 2026 Jun 5Nuninger C, Papasaikas P, Weevers SL, Ferralli J, Smallwood S, Tsiairis CD (2026) Dynamic cell fate transitions during morphallactic regeneration.
Nat Commun. 2026 Jun 2Ben Zouari Y, Joshi O, Salvi A, Kessler S, Ducret S, Ross F, Holwerda SJB, Vilain N, Mamilla-Sanivaram S, Smallwood S, Kohler H, Stadler MB, Minoux M, Rijli FM (2026) Polycomb chromatin topology enables long-range enhancer recruitment during craniofacial development.
Nat Commun. 2026 May 14Nikolakopoulou K, Ybañez W, Klaeylé L, Frugoli L, Cindrova-Davies T, Hotz HR, Soneson C, Turco MY (2026) An in vitro menstrual cycle using organoids captures epithelial cell transitions during menstruation and regeneration of the human endometrium.
Cell Stem Cell. 2026 May 7;33(5):747-762.e8Weiss J, Vecchia L, Domjan D, Cavadini S, Sabantsev A, Kempf G, Pathare GR, Brackmann K, Michael AK, Kater L, Hietter-Pfeiffer E, Haddawi M, Kuber UP, Mühlhäusser S, Grand RS, Stadler MB, Deindl S, Thomä NH (2026) The human BAF chromatin remodeler processes nucleosomes bound by pioneer transcription factors OCT4-SOX2.
Mol Cell. 2026 Feb 19;86(4):625-639.e8Gaidatzis D, Graf-Landua M, Methot SP, Wölk M, Brancati G, Hauser YP, Meeuse MWM, Nahar S, Braun K, van der Does M, Aluri S, Kohler H, Smallwood S, Großhans H (2025) A scheduler for rhythmic gene expression.
Mol Syst Biol. 2025 Dec;21(12):1793-1821Kawamura YK, Ozonov EA, Papasaikas P, Kondo T, Nguyen NV, Stadler MB, Smallwood SA, Koseki H, Peters AHFM (2025) Preventing CpG hypermethylation in oocytes safeguards mouse development.
Dev Cell. 2025 Dec 1;60(23):3285-3303.e9Ferenc J, Bonvin M, Papasaikas P, Ferralli J, Nuninger C, Tsiairis CD (2025) A transcription factor toggle switch determines differentiated epidermal cell identities in Hydra.
Development. 2025 Sep 1;152(17)Durdu S, Iskar M, Isbel L, Hoerner L, Wirbelauer C, Burger L, Hess D, Iesmantavicius V, Schübeler D (2025) Chromatin-dependent motif syntax defines differentiation trajectories.
Mol Cell. 2025 Aug 7;85(15):2900-2918.e16Bocker MT, Fanourgakis G, Wetzel K, Komarov PA, Royo H, Rohmer A, Chun S, Liang CY, Kohler H, Chen T, Mao X, Labow MA, Valdez RA, Stadler MB, de Rooij DG, Capodieci P, Tallarico J, Peters AHFM, Nicholson TB (2025) The histone H3 lysine 36 demethylase KDM2A/FBXL11 controls Polycomb-mediated gene repression and germ cell development in male mice.
Nat Commun. 2025 Jul 23;16(1):6803Skribbe M, Soneson C, Stadler MB, Schwaiger M, Suma Sreechakram VN, Iesmantavicius V, Hess D, Moreno EPF, Braun S, Seebacher J, Smallwood SA, Bühler M (2025) A comprehensive Schizosaccharomyces pombe atlas of physical transcription factor interactions with proteins and chromatin.
Mol Cell. 2025 Apr 3;85(7):1426-1444.e8Fanourgakis G, Gaspa-Toneu L, Komarov PA, Papasaikas P, Ozonov EA, Smallwood SA, Peters AHFM (2025) DNA methylation modulates nucleosome retention in sperm and H3K4 methylation deposition in early mouse embryos.
Nat Commun. 2025 Jan 7;16(1):465Williams TD, Michalak EM, Carey KT, Lam EYN, Anderson A, Griesbach E, Chan YC, Papasaikas P, Tan VWT, Ngo L, MacPherson L, Gilan O, Rucinski A, Rutkowska-Klute A, Zinn N, Grandi P, Bantscheff M, Prinjha RK, Dawson SJ, Chao JA, Wickramasinghe VO, Dawson MA (2025) mRNA export factors store nascent transcripts within nuclear speckles as an adaptive response to transient global inhibition of transcription.
Mol Cell. 2025 Jan 2;85(1):117-131.e7Gudipati RK, Gaidatzis D, Seebacher J, Muehlhaeusser S, Kempf G, Cavadini S, Hess D, Soneson C, Großhans H (2024) Deep quantification of substrate turnover defines protease subsite cooperativity.
Mol Syst Biol. 2024 Dec;20(12):1303-1328Shimada K, Tarashev CVD, Bregenhorn S, Gerhold CB, van Loon B, Roth G, Hurst V, Jiricny J, Helliwell SB, Gasser SM (2024) TORC2 inhibition triggers yeast chromosome fragmentation through mis regulated Base Excision Repair of clustered oxidation events.
Nat Commun. 2024 Nov 15;15(1):9908Ohsawa S, Schwaiger M, Iesmantavicius V, Hashimoto R, Moriyama H, Matoba H, Hirai G, Sodeoka M, Hashimoto A, Matsuyama A, Yoshida M, Yashiroda Y, Bühler M (2024) Nitrogen signaling factor triggers a respiration-like gene expression program in fission yeast.
EMBO J. 2024 Oct;43(20):4604-4624Grand RS, Pregnolato M, Baumgartner L, Hoerner L, Burger L, Schübeler D (2024) Genome access is transcription factor-specific and defined by nucleosome position.
Mol Cell. 2024 Sep 19;84(18):3455-3468.e6Schwaiger M, Mohn F, Bühler M, Kaaij LJT (2024) guidedNOMe-seq quantifies chromatin states at single allele resolution for hundreds of custom regions in parallel.
BMC Genomics. 2024 Jul 29;25(1):732Iurlaro M, Masoni F, Flyamer IM, Wirbelauer C, Iskar M, Burger L, Giorgetti L, Schübeler D (2024) Systematic assessment of ISWI subunits shows that NURF creates local accessibility for CTCF.
Nat Genet. 2024 Jun;56(6):1203-1212Nahar S, Morales Moya LJ, Brunner J, Hendriks GJ, Towbin B, Hauser YP, Brancati G, Gaidatzis D, Großhans H (2024) Dynamics of miRNA accumulation during C. elegans larval development.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2024 May 22;52(9):5336-5355Hochstoeger T, Papasaikas P, Piskadlo E, Chao JA (2024) Distinct roles of LARP1 and 4EBP1/2 in regulating translation and stability of 5'TOP mRNAs.
Sci Adv. 2024 Feb 16;10(7):eadi7830Anneser L, Satou C, Hotz HR, Friedrich RW (2024) Molecular organization of neuronal cell types and neuromodulatory systems in the zebrafish telencephalon.
Curr Biol. 2024 Jan 22;34(2):298-312.e4Hamelin B, Obradovic MMS, Sethi A, Kloc M, Münst S, Beisel C, Eschbach K, Kohler H, Soysal S, Vetter M, Weber WP, Stadler MB, Bentires-Alj M (2023) Single-cell Analysis Reveals Inter- and Intratumour Heterogeneity in Metastatic Breast Cancer.
J Mammary Gland Biol Neoplasia. 2023 Dec 8;28(1):26Hadziselimovic F, Verkauskas G, Stadler MB (2023) Epigenetics, cryptorchidism, and infertility.
Basic Clin Androl. 2023 Sep 21;33(1):24Charlotte Soneson , Vytautas Iesmantavicius, Daniel Hess, Michael B Stadler, Jan Seebacher (2023) einprot: flexible, easy-to-use, reproducible workflows for statistical analysis of quantitative proteomics data
Journal of Open Source Software, sept 2023 8(89), 5750Welte T, Goulois A, Stadler MB, Hess D, Soneson C, Neagu A, Azzi C, Wisser MJ, Seebacher J, Schmidt I, Estoppey D, Nigsch F, Reece-Hoyes J, Hoepfner D, Großhans H (2023) Convergence of multiple RNA-silencing pathways on GW182/TNRC6.
Mol Cell. 2023 Jul 20;83(14):2478-2492.e8Couto JP, Vulin M, Jehanno C, Coissieux MM, Hamelin B, Schmidt A, Ivanek R, Sethi A, Bräutigam K, Frei AL, Hager C, Manivannan M, Gómez-Miragaya J, Obradovic MM, Varga Z, Koelzer VH, Mertz KD, Bentires-Alj M (2023) Nicotinamide N-methyltransferase sustains a core epigenetic program that promotes metastatic colonization in breast cancer.
EMBO J. 2023 Jul 3;42(13):e112559Isbel L, Iskar M, Durdu S, Weiss J, Grand RS, Hietter-Pfeiffer E, Kozicka Z, Michael AK, Burger L, Thomä NH, Schübeler D (2023) Readout of histone methylation by Trim24 locally restricts chromatin opening by p53.
Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2023 Jul;30(7):948-957Amante RJ, Jehanno C, De Silva D, Coissieux MM, Ackerknecht M, Romanet V, Sethi A, Hamelin B, Preca BT, Piscuoglio S, Ng CKY, Mohseni M, Bentires-Alj M (2023) PI3K inhibition circumvents resistance to SHP2 blockade in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.
J Mammary Gland Biol Neoplasia. 2023 Jun 9;28(1):13Kessler S, Minoux M, Joshi O, Ben Zouari Y, Ducret S, Ross F, Vilain N, Salvi A, Wolff J, Kohler H, Stadler MB, Rijli FM (2023) A multiple super-enhancer region establishes inter-TAD interactions and controls Hoxa function in cranial neural crest.
Nat Commun. 2023 Jun 5;14(1):3242Full list of publications
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Members
Platform/Service Head

In current position since 2007
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A Swiss native, Michael Stadler holds master’s degrees in Immunology and Bioinformatics from the Universities of Bern and Lausanne. He earned his PhD at the Insel Hospital in Bern, specializing in computational immunology, before pursuing postdoctoral research at MIT in Boston, USA, where he explored alternative splicing. In 2006, he joined the FMI to establish the Computational Biology Platform, and since 2011, he is also an SIB group leader. Outside of work, Michael enjoys hiking, snow sports, and immersing himself in science fiction novels and the music of the ’60s and ’70s.
ReseachMichael applies computational methods to analyze and interpret high-throughput biological data. He also develops software tools for this purpose, and is particularly interested in studying gene expression using single-cell and single-molecule sequencing data.
Education- Postdoc in Computational Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
- PhD in Immunology, University of Bern
- MSc in Bioinformatics, University of Lausanne
- MSc in Medical Microbiology, University of Bern
Technical/Research associates

In current position since 2009
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In current position since 2008
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In current position since 2016
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In current position since 2018
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• PhD in Mathematics, Lund University
• MSc in Engineering Physics, Lund University