News from the Institute

Autophagy is deregulated in cancer, neurodegeneration, and many other human diseases. Around the globe, laboratories are revealing more and more mechanistic details on this versatile recycling machinery. “Autophagy currently enjoys star status”, writes IBC2 Director Ivan Dikic in his latest review on the topic.

Together with colleague Zvulun Elazar from Weizmann Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel), he has now given a comprehensive overview of the medical implications of autophagy, published online in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology.

IBC2 group leader Volker Zickermann was appointed as apl (“ausserplanmässiger”) professor at Goethe University (GU). Volker studied biochemistry at the University of Hannover and obtained his PhD at GU Frankfurt. He then moved to the group of Mårten Wikström in Helsinki where he started to work on respiratory complex I, at that time, however, concentrating on the enzyme complex from bacteria.

One of this years’ faculty awards for teaching commitment was awarded to Georg Voelcker, who has been lecturing at the IBC2 since 1972.

After his retirement, he still actively participated in the education of medical students, and was now honored for his outstanding contribution to the 4th semester biochemistry seminar. “Students attending this seminar already know a lot about biochemistry.

Until now, little was known about the identity of proteins which are disposed via autophagy. In an unbiased approach to shed light on this conundrum, the Behrends group used a novel proteomics technology to selectively capture all cargo proteins carried by autophagosomes in living cells.

The outcome was a long list of 1,147 proteins – amongst them numerous involved in mitochondrial function, a rather unexpected result considering that no treatment triggering mitophagy was applied. The researchers followed up on this and made a yet more surprising discovery:

IBC2 group leader Christian Münch receives one of the prestigious Emmy Noether Grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG).

His project aims at deciphering the mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPRmt) in mammalian cells and will be funded with 2 Mio Euros for up to 5 years. Until now, the signaling network determining the UPRmt has remained largely elusive.