The Center for Soft Nanoscience celebrates the inauguration of the cryoEM center of the University of Münster
We are excited to announce the inaugural symposium and official opening ceremony for our brand new cryoEM center of the University of Münster, Germany (incl. a TFS Titan KRIOS G4, TFS Aquilos II and TFS Talos L120C).
Invited speakers will highlight the recent advances in both single-particle cryoEM and electron tomography as well as their applications to fundamental biological questions. Attendance is free, but registration is necessary (separate registration form below). The afternoon program includes an (optional) tour of the new cryoEM facility, the official inauguration ceremony, the keynote Lecture and a social event.
Werner Kühlbrandt has been a leader in cryoEM for the past 30 years. After his PhD at the MRC-LMB in Cambridge, UK, he was a postdoc at the ETH Zürich and Imperial College London, before becoming a research group leader at EMBL Heidelberg. Since 1997 he has been a director at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany, where his department of Structural Biology studies large membrane protein complexes by single-particle cryoEM and their in situ structure by electron cryo-tomography. Recent examples include the mitochondrial ATP synthase dimer and the respiratory supercomplex at 2 Å resolution.
Stefan Raunser- MPI Molecular Physiology, Dortmund
Stefan Raunser is a structural biologist whose research focuses on understanding molecular mechanisms underlying cellular processes in the healthy and diseased organism. He is Director of the Department of Structural Biochemistry at the Max Planck institute of Molecular Physiology, Adjunct Professor at Technical University Dortmund and Honorary Professor at University of Duisburg-Essen. With his research group, he uses a multidisciplinary approach, including biochemical reconstitutions, high-resolution electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM) and electron cryotomography (cryo-ET) primarily to investigate the structure of macromolecular complexes that play a crucial role in cell physiology, with a particular emphasis on toxin-mediated membrane permeation, the molecular details of muscle contraction and the dynamics of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton. A detailed understanding of these processes is of great importance as they ultimately serve to develop pharmaceutical measures to combat disease. He has authored over 100 papers in the fields of structural and molecular biology and has given over 200 lectures and seminars around the world. He is a scientific member of the Max Planck Society and an elected member of the North Rhine Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and EMBO.
Sonja Welsch was trained as a cell biologist and virologist and completed her PhD at University Heidelberg. As a postdoc at the University of Oxford and at EMBL Heidelberg she studied the effects of virus infection on cells by electron microscopy and electron tomography. Sonja then worked as TEM Application Scientist and Applications Manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Eindhoven. These positions allowed her to gather insights into many EM facilities, the needs of EM users, as well as technical and commercial aspects of new developments in electron microscopy. Since 2020, Sonja works as Head of the Central Electron Microscopy Facility at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, where she and her team provide technical and scientific support for more than 60 internal and external electron microscope users.
Juergen Plitzko studied mineralogy and physics at the University of Tuebingen, Germany, and conducted his PhD research from 1994 to 1998 at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research, Stuttgart, Germany, in a group led by Joachim Mayer. His first postdoctoral position was at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, from 1999 to 2002. In 2002, he moved from materials to life sciences and joined Wolfgang Baumeisters' Department of Molecular Structural Biology at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, first as a postdoc and later as head of Wolfgang's EM group. In 2012, he was appointed full professor at the Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and consulting group leader at CEITEC, Central European Institute of Technology, at Masaryk University in Brno in the Czech Republic. Since 2016, Jürgen Plitzko has been a permanent research group leader for cryo-EM technology at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. Research in JP's group focuses on the development and application of tools and technologies in and for cryo-EM. He is particularly interested in cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) to improve and, most importantly, make all steps from sample preparation to imaging and final data processing more practical. A major goal is to bridge the gap between molecular and cellular structural biology and to apply cryo-ET to larger samples such as small organisms and tissues.
Alexander Rigort currently works in product marketing and development for Thermo Fisher Scientific and holds a guest researcher position at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried. He has pioneered the use of cryo-focused ion beam instruments for cryo-tomography at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and has long-standing experience in cryo-electron microscopy.
We are interested to understand how molecular pumps work. In the lab, we study the conformational cycle of ABC transporters with cryoEM as our primary tool. Using turnover conditions, we deciphered the entire conformational process of an ABC transporter and are now taking a close look at how these machines translocate their substrates through the membrane. ABC transporters, and membrane proteins in general, are tightly regulated by the surrounding membrane - hence, we are exploring the underlying lipid-determinants of transporter function using high-throughput cryoEM as readout.
