EL GRAN CONSENSO: LA CONSTITUCIÓN NACIONAL

This work would not have been possible without the help and guidance by numerous people. First and foremost, I would like to thank my PhD supervisors.

Maria, thank you for accepting me as your first PhD student and taking this “journey”

together with me. On the day we met, you convinced me in one hour that the hair follicle is the coolest thing one can study in biology. And your excitement about science in general and all those little details has not faded since. You inspired me to try out new methods and develop my own ideas. And I most enjoyed our hour-long theory-crafting discussions. You gave me the opportunity to manage my own project and learn so much. Thank you for always leaving your door open, being approachable, and immediately jumping up to find a solution to even the strangest, little problem.

Thank you Viljar, for being my mentor during the first year. Your affectionate and outspoken way made me feel comfortable and helped me to integrate in the lab, when I started. Thank you for teaching me that taking the bad, the worse and the boring with a little humour makes life much easier.

Rune, thank you for welcoming me as a PhD student at KI and the BioNut department. You

always had some wise advice and guidance, when I was stuck. Thank you for imparting your knowledge and experience.

I would like to thank all my half-time review examiners, Maria Eriksson, Inderpreet Sur, and Chritian Göritz for the excellent suggestions helping my research during the last years. I am grateful to all my collaborators that contributed to the work presented in this thesis.

Benjamin D. Simons for the enlightening discussions about stem cell and tissue maintenance

models, and of course the help with our manuscript. Sten Linnarsson’s group for performing the RNA-sequencing analysis. And Hans Clevers for providing the mouse strains.

I would like to thank all my colleagues in the MKA group, who contributed in many ways to this work. Sasha, thank you for managing the lab and always being supportive. You taught me so many tips and tricks in the lab, and always helped me out when I tried new protocols or didn’t manage to make a buffer. Tina, you are wonderful, and probably the most cooperative person in the world. Thanks especially for the correction of this thesis and the taming of the bachelor students in the last month. Thank you Simon for your awesome computer and statistics skills, and simulating all my experiments. Unni and Xiaoyan, thank you for being great company and super nice colleagues. I could always rely on you when I needed your help. Good luck with your postdocs! I also want to thank the Master students that were visiting the lab, Gioele, Eduardo and Karl. You were all fun to work with and I hope I could teach you at least something useful.

I am very grateful to the members of the RTO group that I have been a part of during the first two years. Maria H. my PhD and HEALING companion. Without you the struggle through HEALING would have been much harder. Thank you for being a friend (and of course lots of pancakes). Leander, Marco and Fabian thank you for the weirdest, funniest and of course most helpful discussions. It has been a pleasure. Thank you, Agneta for always being open and helpful in any situation, Elin for your very nice company and great help with the mouse work, Åsa B. and Maryam for managing the lab and all the help with the mouse work.

Peter, thank you for always being interested in my work and asking helpful questions. Stephan, Csaba, Uta, Katharina, Ferdous, Yumei, Ani and Raoul, thank you for the nice

company and journal club discussions. Gunnel, Britt-Marie and Robert, thank you for the nice fika company. My former colleagues (in the old office), Åsa K., Vicky, Karin and

Ulrika, thank you for all your advice.

Thank you Sylvie LeGuyader for the microscopy help and cookies. Thank you Åsa-Lena

Dackland and Iyadh Douagi for the support with FACS sorting and analysis. The staff of

the BEA core facility, especially Marika Rönnholm and Patrick Müller, thank you for being super cooperative and helpful with my transcriptomics work. Thank you to the BioNut

administration and service team for all the support during the years.

Jens, my husband, soul-mate and best friend. Thank you for always motivating me and

making life more exciting, but also holding me back in the right moments. Thank you for always being there for me. I will love you forever. Ich mag dich! Sofia, the most wonderful detour on this journey. When you hold my hand, I know what I am living for. My parents,

Manuela and Richard. Thank you for all the love and support. And all the train rides to

Stockholm! My parents-in-law, Gabi and Burkhard, you are the best. And my grandparents,

Helga, Rita and Theo, thank you for being so interested and proud.

Thank you also to my new manager and colleagues at the EBI ArrayExpress/Atlas team for the lovely welcome and all the support during the writing of this thesis.

I would also like to thank the ImageJ and R/Bioconductor open source communities, who develop great software that make life as a bioscience researcher much easier.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my sponsors. The EU FP7 Marie Curie initial training network HEALING, and its organisers for the wonderful scientific meetings and the exchange with other young researchers. Radiumhemmet and Cancerfonden that allowed me to visit the fantastic ISSCR stem cell conference in 2014.