The Biology department at the University of Freiburg is supported by the German “Excellence Initiative”, a program that supports only the best Universities in the country. While in the Petrov Lab (2010-2013) Fabian studied the bacterial flora associated with Drosophila in the wild and in the lab. During his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology Fabian studied the evolution of gene expression in house mice and discovered a new gene, which emerged from noncoding sequence in the house mouse lineage. In the Petrov Lab Fabian studies the bacterial flora associated with Drosophila and its contribution to adaptive evolution of the host.