Hansi Weissensteiner
Dr.techn.

Senior Scientist

+43 512 9003 70564
hansi.weissensteiner@i-med.ac.at
0000-0002-2871-8669
@whansi


About

I am a Postdoctoral researcher in bioinformatics who studied Computer Science at the Group of Databases and Information Systems (DBIS) at the Leopold Franzens University in Innsbruck, Austria and at the Deparmtent of Computer Science (DIKU) at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. I am developing software for the analysis of genetic data, with focus on mitochondrial genetics (mtDNA). The tools for mtDNA analysis cover haplogroup classification, variant calling for second- and third-generation sequencing as well as tools for quality control (QC) and contamination detection on mtDNA. Besides benchmarking and improving variant callers for mtDNA, I am highly interested in characterisation of mtDNA in cancer tissues and patients with age related diseases.

Research interests

External Collaborations

Key Publications

Weissensteiner H, Forer L, Kronenberg F, Schönherr S: mtDNA-Server 2: advancing mitochondrial DNA analysis through highly parallelized data processing and interactive analytics. Nucleic Acids Res. 52:W102-W107, 2024. PMID: 38709886   Journal Article

Weissensteiner H, Forer L, Fendt L, Kheirkhah A, Salas A, Kronenberg F, Schoenherr S: Contamination detection in sequencing studies using the mitochondrial phylogeny. Genome Res. 31:309-316, 2021. PMID: 33452015   Journal Article

Schöpf B, Weissensteiner H, Schäfer G, Fazzini F, Charoentong P, Naschberger A, Rupp B, Fendt L, Bukur V, Giese I, Sorn P, Sant’Anna-Silva AC, Iglesias-Gonzalez J, Sahin U, Kronenberg F, Gnaiger E, Klocker H: OXPHOS remodeling in high-grade prostate cancer involves mtDNA mutations and increased succinate oxidation. Nat. Commun. 11:1487, 2020. PMID: 32198407   Journal Article

Weissensteiner H, Pacher D, Kloss-Brandstätter A, Forer L, Specht G, Bandelt HJ, Kronenberg F, Salas A, Schönherr S: HaploGrep 2: mitochondrial haplogroup classification in the era of high-throughput sequencing. Nucleic Acids Res. 44:W58-63, 2016. PMID: 27084951   Journal Article

Courses

SS 2025

WS 2024/2025

SS 2024

WS 2023/2024

SS 2023

WS 2022/2023

SS 2022

WS 2021/2022

Publications

2025 (1)

  1. Papadam A, Mihov M, Koller A, Weissensteiner H, Stark K, Grassmann F: Tapping natures rhythm: the role of season in mitochondrial function and genetics in the UK biobank. Hum. Genomics 19:34, 2025. PMID: 40158147   Journal Article

2024 (8)

  1. Lüth T, Weissensteiner H: Mitochondrial genetics in Parkinson’s Disease In: Trinh J, ed. Integrative Omics in Parkinson’s Disease. 2024:101-133, 2024. PMID:   Book Chapter
  2. Koller A, Filosi M, Weissensteiner H, Fazzini F, Gorski M, Pattaro C, Schönherr S, Forer L, Herold JM, Stark KJ, Döttelmayer P, Hicks AA, Pramstaller PP, Würzner R, Eckardt KU, Heid IM, Fuchsberger C, Lamina C, Kronenberg F: Nuclear and mitochondrial genetic variants associated with mitochondrial DNA copy number. Sci Rep 14:2083, 2024. PMID: 38267512   Journal Article
  3. Steinbrenner I, Kotsis F, Kosch R, Meiselbach H, Bärthlein B, Stockmann H, Lipovsek J, Zacharias HU, Altenbuchinger M, Dienemann T, Wytopil M, Bächle H, Sommerer C, Titze S, Weigel A, Weissensteiner H, Schönherr S, Forer L, Kurz NS, Menne J, Schlieper G, Schneider MP, Schäffner E, Kielstein JT, Sitter T, Floege J, Wanner C, Kronenberg F, Köttgen A, Busch M, Krane V, Schmid M, Eckardt KU, Schultheiss UT: Interactive exploration of adverse events and multimorbidity in CKD. Nephrol. Dial. Transplant :, 2024. PMID: 38664006   Journal Article
  4. Weissensteiner H*, Forer L*, Kronenberg F, Schönherr S: mtDNA-Server 2: advancing mitochondrial DNA analysis through highly parallelized data processing and interactive analytics. Nucleic Acids Res. 52:W102-W107, 2024. PMID: 38709886   Journal Article
  5. Di Maio S, Zöscher P, Weissensteiner H, Forer L, Schachtl-Riess JF, Amstler S, Streiter G, Pfurtscheller C, Paulweber B, Kronenberg F, Coassin S, Schönherr S: Resolving intra-repeat variation in medically relevant VNTRs from short-read sequencing data using the cardiovascular risk gene LPA as a model. Genome Biol. 25:167, 2024. PMID: 38926899   Journal Article
  6. Amstler S, Streiter G, Pfurtscheller C, Forer L, Di Maio S, Weissensteiner H, Paulweber B, Schönherr S, Kronenberg F, Coassin S: Nanopore sequencing with unique molecular identifiers enables accurate mutation analysis and haplotyping in the complex lipoprotein(a) KIV-2 VNTR. Genome Med. 16:117, 2024. PMID: 39380090   Journal Article
  7. Kollerits B, Gruber S, Steinbrenner I, Schwaiger JP, Weissensteiner H, Schönherr S, Forer L, Kotsis F, Schultheiss UT, Meiselbach H, Wanner C, Eckardt KU, Kronenberg F, GCKD Investigators: Apolipoprotein A-IV concentrations and cancer in a large cohort of chronic kidney disease patients: results from the GCKD study. BMC Cancer 24:320, 2024. PMID: 38454416   Journal Article
  8. Kollerits B, Kotsis F, Schneider MP, Schultheiss UT, Weissensteiner H, Schönherr S, Forer L, Meiselbach H, Wanner C, Eckardt KU, Dieplinger H, Kronenberg F, GCKD Investigators: Association of serum afamin concentrations with kidney failure in patients with CKD: Findings from the German CKD cohort study. Am. J. Kidney Dis. :, 2024. PMID: 39743167   Journal Article

2023 (3)

  1. Schönherr S, Weissensteiner H, Kronenberg F, Forer L: Haplogrep 3 - an interactive haplogroup classification and analysis platform. Nucleic Acids Res. 51:W263-W268, 2023. PMID: 37070190   Journal Article
  2. Koller A, Lamina C, Brandl C, Zimmermann ME, Stark KJ, Weissensteiner H, Würzner R, Heid IM, Kronenberg F: Systemic evidence for mitochondrial dysfunction in age-related macular degeneration as revealed by mtDNA copy number measurements in peripheral blood. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 24:, 2023. PMID: 38003595   Journal Article
  3. Trinh J, Hicks AA, König IR, Delcambre S, Lüth T, Schaake S, Wasner K, Ghelfi J, Borsche M, Vilariño-Güell C, Hentati F, Germer EL, Bauer P, Takanashi M, Kostić V, Lang AE, Brüggemann N, Pramstaller PP, Pichler I, Rajput A, Hattori N, Farrer MJ, Lohmann K, Weissensteiner H, May P, Klein C, Grünewald A: Mitochondrial DNA heteroplasmy distinguishes disease manifestation in PINK1/PRKN-linked Parkinson's disease. Brain 146:2753-2765, 2023. PMID: 36478228   Journal Article

2022 (5)

  1. Schwaiger JP, Kollerits B, Steinbrenner I, Weissensteiner H, Schönherr S, Forer L, Kotsis F, Lamina C, Schneider MP, Schultheiss UT, Wanner C, Köttgen A, Eckardt KU, Kronenberg F, GCKD Investigators: Apolipoprotein A-IV concentrations and clinical outcomes in a large chronic kidney disease cohort: Results from the GCKD study. J. Intern. Med. 291:622-636, 2022. PMID: 34914850   Journal Article
  2. Grüneis R, Weissensteiner H, Lamina C, Schönherr S, Forer L, Di Maio S, Streiter G, Peters A, Gieger C, Kronenberg F, Coassin S: The kringle IV type 2 domain variant 4925G>A causes the elusive association signal of the LPA pentanucleotide repeat. J. Lipid Res. 63:100306, 2022. PMID: 36309064   Journal Article
  3. Bello X, Pardo-Seco J, Gómez-Carballa A, Weissensteiner H, Martinón-Torres F, Salas A: CovidPhy: A tool for phylogeographic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 variation. Environ. Res. 204:111909, 2022. PMID: 34419470   Journal Article
  4. Lüth T, Schaake S, Grünewald A, May P, Trinh J, Weissensteiner H: Benchmarking low-frequency variant calling with long-read data on mitochondrial DNA. Front. Genet. 13:887644, 2022. PMID: 35664331   Journal Article
  5. Aboulmaouahib B, Kastenmüller G, Suhre K, Zöllner S, Weissensteiner H, Prehn C, Adamski J, Gieger C, Wang-Sattler R, Lichtner P, Strauch K, Flaquer A: First mitochondrial genome-wide association study with metabolomics. Hum. Mol. Genet. 31:3367-3376, 2022. PMID: 34718574   Journal Article

2021 (6)

  1. Fazzini F, Lamina C, Raftopoulou A, Koller A, Fuchsberger C, Pattaro C, Del Greco FM, Döttelmayer P, Fendt L, Fritz J, Meiselbach H, Schönherr S, Forer L, Weissensteiner H, Pramstaller PP, Eckardt KU, Hicks AA, Kronenberg F, GCKD Investigators: Association of mitochondrial DNA copy number with metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes in 14 176 individuals. J. Intern. Med. 290:190-202, 2021. PMID: 33453124   Journal Article
  2. Fazzini F, Fendt L, Schönherr S, Forer L, Schöpf B, Streiter G, Losso JL, Kloss-Brandstätter A, Kronenberg F, Weissensteiner H: Analyzing low-level mtDNA heteroplasmy-pitfalls and challenges from bench to benchmarking. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 22:935, 2021. PMID: 33477827   Journal Article
  3. Weissensteiner H, Forer L, Fendt L, Kheirkhah A, Salas A, Kronenberg F, Schoenherr S: Contamination detection in sequencing studies using the mitochondrial phylogeny. Genome Res. 31:309-316, 2021. PMID: 33452015   Journal Article
  4. Kloss-Brandstätter A, Summerer M, Horst D, Horst B, Streiter G, Raschenberger J, Kronenberg F, Sanguansermsri T, Horst J, Weissensteiner H: An in-depth analysis of the mitochondrial phylogenetic landscape of Cambodia. Sci. Rep. 11:10816, 2021. PMID: 34031453   Journal Article
  5. Latzko L, Schöpf B, Weissensteiner H, Fazzini F, Fendt L, Steiner E, Bruckmoser E, Schäfer G, Moncayo RC, Klocker H, Laimer J: Implications of standardized uptake values of oral squamous cell carcinoma in PET-CT on prognosis, tumor characteristics and mitochondrial DNA heteroplasmy. Cancers (Basel) 13:2273, 2021. PMID: 34068489   Journal Article
  6. Cortes-Figueiredo F, Carvalho FS, Fonseca AC, Paul F, Ferro JM, Schönherr S, Weissensteiner H, Morais VA: From forensics to clinical research: Expanding the variant calling pipeline for the Precision ID mtDNA Whole Genome Panel. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 22:12031, 2021. PMID: 34769461   Journal Article

2020 (4)

  1. Schöpf B, Weissensteiner H, Schäfer G, Fazzini F, Charoentong P, Naschberger A, Rupp B, Fendt L, Bukur V, Giese I, Sorn P, Sant'Anna-Silva AC, Iglesias-Gonzalez J, Sahin U, Kronenberg F, Gnaiger E, Klocker H: OXPHOS remodeling in high-grade prostate cancer involves mtDNA mutations and increased succinate oxidation. Nat. Commun. 11:1487, 2020. PMID: 32198407   Journal Article
  2. Fazzini F, Lamina C, Raschenberger J, Schultheiss UT, Kotsis F, Schönherr S, Weissensteiner H, Forer L, Steinbrenner I, Meiselbach H, Bärthlein B, Wanner C, Eckardt KU, Köttgen A, Kronenberg F, GCKD Investigators: Results from the German Chronic Kidney Disease (GCKD) study support association of relative telomere length with mortality in a large cohort of patients with moderate chronic kidney disease. Kidney Int. 98:488-497, 2020. PMID: 32641227   Journal Article
  3. Fendt L, Fazzini F, Weissensteiner H, Bruckmoser E, Schönherr S, Schäfer G, Losso JL, Streiter GA, Lamina C, Rasse M, Klocker H, Kofler B, Kloss-Brandstätter A, Huck CW, Kronenberg F, Laimer J: Profiling of mitochondrial DNA heteroplasmy in a prospective oral squamous cell carcinoma study. Cancers (Basel) 12:1933, 2020. PMID: 32708892   Journal Article
  4. Salas A, Schönherr S, Bandelt HJ, Gómez-Carballa A, Weissensteiner H: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in asserted mtDNA biparental inheritance. Forensic Sci. Int. Genet. 47:102274, 2020. PMID: 32330850   Commentary

2019 (2)

  1. Coassin S*, Schönherr S*, Weissensteiner H, Erhart G, Forer L, Losso JL, Lamina C, Haun M, Utermann G, Paulweber B, Specht G, Kronenberg F: A comprehensive map of single-base polymorphisms in the hypervariable LPA kringle IV type 2 copy number variation region. J. Lipid Res. 60:186-199, 2019. PMID: 30413653   Journal Article
  2. Fazzini F, Lamina C, Fendt L, Schultheiss UT, Kotsis F, Hicks AA, Meiselbach H, Weissensteiner H, Forer L, Krane V, Eckardt KU, Köttgen A, Kronenberg F, GCKD Investigators: Mitochondrial DNA copy number is associated with mortality and infections in a large cohort of patients with chronic kidney disease. Kidney Int. 96:480-488, 2019. PMID: 31248648   Journal Article

2017 (1)

  1. Coassin S, Erhart G, Weissensteiner H, Eca Guimarães de Araújo M, Lamina C, Schönherr S, Forer L, Haun M, Losso JL, Köttgen A, Schmidt K, Utermann G, Peters A, Gieger C, Strauch K, Finkenstedt A, Bale R, Zoller H, Paulweber B, Eckardt KU, Hüttenhofer A, Huber LA, Kronenberg F: A novel but frequent variant in LPA KIV-2 is associated with a pronounced Lp(a) and cardiovascular risk reduction. Eur. Heart J. 38:1823-1831, 2017. PMID: 28444229   Journal Article

2016 (3)

  1. Forer L, Afgan E, Weissensteiner H, Davidovic D, Specht G, Kronenberg F, Schönherr S: Cloudflow - Enabling faster biomedical pipelines with Mapreduce and Spark. Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience 17:103-114, 2016. PMID:   Proceedings
  2. Weissensteiner H*, Forer L*, Fuchsberger C, Schöpf B, Kloss-Brandstätter A, Specht G, Kronenberg F, Schönherr S: mtDNA-Server: next-generation sequencing data analysis of human mitochondrial DNA in the cloud. Nucleic Acids Res. 44:W64-9, 2016. PMID: 27084948   Journal Article
  3. Weissensteiner H, Pacher D, Kloss-Brandstätter A, Forer L, Specht G, Bandelt HJ, Kronenberg F, Salas A, Schönherr S: HaploGrep 2: mitochondrial haplogroup classification in the era of high-throughput sequencing. Nucleic Acids Res. 44:W58-63, 2016. PMID: 27084951   Journal Article

2015 (5)

  1. Forer L, Afgan E, Weissensteiner H, Davidovic D, Specht G, Kronenberg F, Schönherr S: A framework for MapReduce pipeline development in Biomedical Research. 38th International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics, MIPRO 2015 2015:172-177, 2015. PMID:   Proceedings
  2. Raschenberger J, Kollerits B, Titze S, Köttgen A, Bärthlein B, Ekici AB, Forer L, Schönherr S, Weissensteiner H, Haun M, Wanner C, Eckardt KU, Kronenberg F, GCKD study Investigators: Association of relative telomere length with cardiovascular disease in a large chronic kidney disease cohort: the GCKD study. Atherosclerosis 242:529-534, 2015. PMID: 26302167   Journal Article
  3. Raschenberger J, Kollerits B, Titze S, Köttgen A, Bärthlein B, Ekici AB, Forer L, Schönherr S, Weissensteiner H, Haun M, Wanner C, Eckardt KU, Kronenberg F, GCKD study Investigators: Do telomeres have a higher plasticity than thought? Results from the German Chronic Kidney Disease (GCKD) study as a high-risk population. Exp. Gerontol. 72:162-166, 2015. PMID: 26423240   Journal Article
  4. Kloss-Brandstätter A, Weissensteiner H, Erhart G, Schäfer G, Forer L, Schönherr S, Pacher D, Seifarth C, Stöckl A, Fendt L, Sottsas I, Klocker H, Huck CW, Rasse M, Kronenberg F, Kloss FR: Validation of next-generation sequencing of entire mitochondrial genomes and the diversity of mitochondrial DNA mutations in oral squamous cell carcinoma. PLoS One 10:e0135643, 2015. PMID: 26262956   Journal Article
  5. Kehdy FS, Gouveia MH, Machado M, Magalhães WC, Horimoto AR, Horta BL, Moreira RG, Leal TP, Scliar MO, Soares-Souza GB, Rodrigues-Soares F, Araújo GS, Zamudio R, Sant Anna HP, Santos HC, Duarte NE, Fiaccone RL, Figueiredo CA, Silva TM, Costa GN, Beleza S, Berg DE, Cabrera L, Debortoli G, Duarte D, Ghirotto S, Gilman RH, Gonçalves VF, Marrero AR, Muniz YC, Weissensteiner H, Yeager M, Rodrigues LC, Barreto ML, Lima-Costa MF, Pereira AC, Rodrigues MR, Tarazona-Santos E, Brazilian EPIGEN Project Consortium: Origin and dynamics of admixture in Brazilians and its effect on the pattern of deleterious mutations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 112:8696-8701, 2015. PMID: 26124090   Journal Article

2014 (3)

  1. Forer L, Lipic T, Schönherr S, Weissensteiner H, Davidovic D, Kronenberg F, Afgan E: Delivering bioinformatics MapReduce Applications in the Cloud. 37th International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics, MIPRO 2014 2014:373-377, 2014. PMID:   Proceedings
  2. Summerer M, Horst J, Erhart G, Weißensteiner H, Schönherr S, Pacher D, Forer L, Horst D, Manhart A, Horst B, Sanguansermsri T, Kloss-Brandstätter A: Large-scale mitochondrial DNA analysis in Southeast Asia reveals evolutionary effects of cultural isolation in the multi-ethnic population of Myanmar. BMC Evol. Biol. 14:17, 2014. PMID: 24467713   Journal Article
  3. Lamina C, Linsenmeyer J, Weissensteiner H, Kollerits B, Meisinger C, Rantner B, Stöckl D, Stadler M, Klein-Weigel P, Peters A, Fraedrich G, Kronenberg F: Correlation between a positive family risk score and peripheral artery disease in one case-control and two population-based studies. Atherosclerosis 237:243-250, 2014. PMID: 25259422   Journal Article

2013 (1)

  1. Weissensteiner H, Haun M, Schönherr S, Neuner M, Forer L, Specht G, Kloss-Brandstätter A, Kronenberg F, Coassin S: SNPflow: a lightweight application for the processing, storing and automatic quality checking of genotyping assays. PLoS One 8:e59508, 2013. PMID: 23527209   Journal Article

2012 (2)

  1. Forer L, Schönherr S, Weißensteiner H, Specht G, Kronenberg F, Kloss-Brandstätter A: Cloud computing: bringing computational power to medical genetics. In: Trajanoski Z, ed. Computational Medicine. 2012:27-36, 2012. PMID:   Book Chapter
  2. Schönherr S*, Forer L*, Weißensteiner H, Kronenberg F, Specht G, Kloss-Brandstätter A: Cloudgene: a graphical execution platform for MapReduce programs on private and public clouds. BMC Bioinformatics 13:200, 2012. PMID: 22888776   Journal Article

2011 (1)

  1. Kloss-Brandstätter A, Pacher D, Schönherr S, Weissensteiner H, Binna R, Specht G, Kronenberg F: HaploGrep: a fast and reliable algorithm for automatic classification of mitochondrial DNA haplogroups. Hum. Mutat. 32:25-32, 2011. PMID: 20960467   Journal Article

2010 (2)

  1. Weissensteiner H, Schönherr S, Specht G, Kronenberg F, Brandstätter A: eCOMPAGT integrates mtDNA: import, validation and export of mitochondrial DNA profiles for population genetics, tumour dynamics and genotype-phenotype association studies. BMC Bioinformatics 11:122, 2010. PMID: 20214782   Journal Article
  2. Forer L, Schönherr S, Weissensteiner H, Haider F, Kluckner T, Gieger C, Wichmann HE, Specht G, Kronenberg F, Kloss-Brandstätter A: CONAN: copy number variation analysis software for genome-wide association studies. BMC Bioinformatics 11:318, 2010. PMID: 20546565   Journal Article

2009 (1)

  1. Schönherr S, Weissensteiner H, Coassin S, Specht G, Kronenberg F, Brandstätter A: eCOMPAGT -- efficient combination and management of phenotypes and genotypes for genetic epidemiology. BMC Bioinformatics 10:139, 2009. PMID: 19432954   Journal Article