Amunts Lab
How does life build the machinery of energy?
The ERC Grant led by Alexey Amunts investigates how mitochondria and chloroplasts build the molecular machines that power cells and organise membranes into energy-converting units. A central idea is that bioenergetic membranes position electron flow, ATP synthesis and membrane curvature within one organised system. When this organisation is disrupted, mitochondrial function can be compromised with consequences for ageing, neurodegeneration, infertility and other diseases. The programme is based on the structural biology and has revealed how mitoribosomes are assembled and coupled to membrane insertion of newly synthesised proteins (Itoh et al., 2021, 2022), and how respiratory supercomplexes shape mitochondrial membranes (Mühleip et al., 2023). Photosynthesis studies with Michael Hippler resolved an algal photosystem I dimer (Naschberger, Mosebach et al., 2022), and work on plant photosystem I identified PsaF as an assembly checkpoint (Naschberger, Fadeeva et al., 2024). The programme also contributed to CryoAtom, a computational method for building atomic models from cryo-EM maps (Su et al., 2026).
The funding is under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement No. 805230. Project period: 1 May 2019 - 30 September 2026.
Selected publications
Itoh, Y. et al. (2021). Mechanism of membrane-tethered mitochondrial protein synthesis. Science 371, 846–849. DOI
Itoh, Y. et al. (2022). Mechanism of mitoribosomal small subunit biogenesis and preinitiation. Nature 606, 603–608. DOI
Naschberger, A., Mosebach, L. et al. (2022). Algal photosystem I dimer and high-resolution model of PSI-plastocyanin complex. Nature Plants 8, 1191–1201. DOI
Mühleip, A. et al. (2023). Structural basis of mitochondrial membrane bending by the I–II–III₂–IV₂ supercomplex. Nature 615, 934–938. DOI
Naschberger, A., Fadeeva, M. et al. (2024). Structure of plant photosystem I in a native assembly state defines PsaF as a regulatory checkpoint. Nature Plants 10, 874–879. DOI
Su, B., Huang, K., Peng, Z., Amunts, A. & Yang, J. (2026). CryoAtom improves model building for cryo-EM. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology 33, 351–361. DOI