News

News

April 2024

New postdoc joined the group!

Himani Khurana joined the lab as a Postdoc! Previously, she was a PhD student with Thomas Pucadyil at the IISER in Pune on how Dynamin cuts membranes. Now, she is working in collaboration with Sascha Martens at Max Perutz Labs to study the mechanisms of membrane flux in vitro.

December 2023

Secret Santa in the lab!

October 2023

Dr. Nataliia Gnyliukh!

Nataliia just defended her thesis, congratulations to your beautiful work on clathrin-mediated endocytosis in plants!

Nataliia just defended her thesis, congratulations to your beautiful work on clathrin-mediated endocytosis in plants!

New paper published!

Our paper on the self-organization of FtsZ filaments is now published in Nature Physics!

September 2023

New group members

Jesse Tönjes and Katharina Kirchmayr joined the group!

Dr. Philipp Radler!

Big congratulations to Philipp for his successful PhD defense yesterday!

July 2023

New paper published!

How does membrane localization affect biochemical reactions? Together Thomas Leonard and Sascha Martens we wrote a perspective article about it. Now published in Developmental Cell!

June 2023

Group retreat 2023

We had a great time in Emmersdorf during our group retreat!

December 2022

New preprint published!

We combined TIRF, STED, HS AFM imaging with simulations to understand how treadmilling FtsZ filaments interact. A great collaboration with the group of Edouard Hannezo.

Find the manuscript here!

New review published!

We wrote a short review for FEBS letters on how to reconstitute small GTPase signaling. Find it here!

July 2022

We were awarded with the ERC Consolidator Grant!

In the next five years, GTPaseNet we will combine synthetic and structural biology approaches to understand the emergent properties and the underlying molecular mechanism of the biochemical networks regulating small GTPases!

We will recruit Postdocs and PhD students, watch this space for more job openings!

June 2022

  • Job opening: We are looking for a research technician who can help us express and purify proteins! I think we are a great team, come join us! Please find more details here.
  • We have finally moved to the Sunstone Building into our brand new lab space!

May 2022

Philipp’s and Natalia’s paper on the mechanism of E. coli divisome activation is now published in Nature Communications!

November 2021

Xing Ye joined the group to work on cell division mechanisms in archaea!

September 2021

July 2021

Rahmah arrived at IST to work as an intern with us before she starts with the PhD program in September, welcome!

April 2021

Anita Čarija joined the lab as a technician!

February 2021

Our paper on the in vitro reconstitution of peptidoglycan synthesis by membrane-embedded penicillin binding proteins is now published in eLife!

This is the result of a >5 year collaboration with the groups of Waldemar Vollmer and Eefjan Breukink, driven by two fantastic postdocs, Victor Hernandez-Rocamora and Natalia Baranova.

January 2021

New paper just published in Molecular Biology of the Cell! We collaborated with Keisuke Ishihara, Jan Brugués and Tim Mitchison to study polymerization of microtubules in asters. It nicely shows the power of differential imaging to study dynamic processes in crowding environment!

December 2020

  • A busy 2020 comes to an end and Natalia, Christian and Batir will leave the group to start new endeavors. All the best to you!
  • New paper now out in PNAS! ADAP1 has long been considered to be an adaptor for PIP3 transport, contributing to neuronal polarity. Christian and Albert from the group found that PIPs are actually release factors that displace ADAP1 from the motor!
    Instead, our results suggest a model where KIF13B acts in concert with PIP3 to distribute, deposit, and activate ADAP1, which in turn acts as a GAP to switch off ARF6 and thereby controls dendrite branching.
Proposed model for the action of ADAP1. KIF13B transports ADAP1 along microtubules in dendrites (i) until it reaches regions of high PIP3 or PI(3,4)P2 concentration. Here, ADAP1 is released from KIF13B (ii) and recruited to the membrane (iii), where it stimulates GTP hydrolysis and membrane detachment of ARF6 (iv).

September 2020

Zane Alsberga joined the lab as a research technician, welcome!

The second student from the group defended his thesis today. Congratulations to Paulo for his great work!

After Paulo’s defense

August 2020

Gabriel Brognara joined the lab to work on the mechanism of Rab5 activation, welcome!

June 2020

Urban successfully defended his thesis, congratulations Dr. Bezeljak!

After Urban’s defense

March 2020

  • New website is online! The old one can still be found here.
  • Due to the Coronavirus, the lab has shut down for now. We’ll be back at the bench in a couple of weeks. In the meantime the lab meeting happens on Zoom!
March 20th: First group meeting during social distancing.

February 2020

January 2020

  • Lukasz and Isabel joined our group today, welcome!
  • Our paper on the dynamic coupling between treadmilling FtsZ filaments and cell division proteins has been published in Nature Microbiology! 
  • Natalia also wrote a blog post on our story for the Nature Research Microbiology Community, find it here!
Treadmilling filaments of FtsZ (right) organize the cytoplasmic peptide of FtsN attached to the lipid bilayer.

December 2019

  • Our fanatastic technician Mar won the yearly award for “Outstanding Scientific Support” at IST Austria, congratulations!  
  • Paulo’s paper on how ZapA modulates the architecture of FtsZ filament bundles has been published in to the Nature Communications!
Binding of ZapA aligns treadmilling FtsZ filaments in a cooperative manner and without changing the treadmilling speed.

November 2019

Martin has been selected to the EMBO YIP program!

September 2019

Urban has studied the emergent properties of a Rab5 activation network in vitro. We found cooperative activation, bistability and activation waves!

In vitro reconstitution of Rab5 activation revealed the emergent properties of the underlying biochemical network.

Find the preprint “Stochastic activation and bistability in a Rab GTPase regulatory network” on BioRxiv! 

June 2019

Great food and science at our “Loose lab symposium” at Tulbinger Kogel!

April 2019

Natalia, Phillip and Paulo attended the Cell Biology of Prokaryotes conference at the Banz Abbey! Natalia was selected to give a talk and Paulo won the 1st poster prize, congratulations!

March 2019

The preprint to Paulo’s paper is online! He studied how ZapA modulates the architecture of a membrane-bound FtsZ cytoskeletal network. To our surprise, ZapA strongly affects the architecture of FtsZ filament bundles, but has no influence on treadmilling dynamics. Find the preprint on BioRxiv!

The presence of ZapA (right) has a dramatic effect on the large-scale organization of FtsZ filaments.

January 2019

Batirtze joined the lab as a Postdoc today, welcome!

January 2015 – December 2018

For other news please check the old website!