Passionate for integrated structural biology, including NMR and many more. Particularly interested in protein dynamics, and therefore chaperones, enzymes and mitochondrial protein import.
Fortunate to lead a great research team at IST Austria.
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MD simulations told us about the underlying mechanisms. And also show that what is called "breathing motion" is actually a complex rearrangement of interactions that have to be re-shuffled such that the ring can rotate. T-dependent MAS NMR told us how the crystal restricts such motions.
It has been a fantastic and fun journey with collaborators across fields and continents: particularly Lea M Becker, the driving force behind the #MAS #NMR, together with Ben Tatman at @istaresearch.bsky.social. Chris Chipot (#MDsimulations) at @cnrs.fr , Sylvain Engilberge at @esrf.fr .
The relevance of this work goes far beyond our favourite pet protein (GB1 here). It has implications for what is becoming very popular these days: protein-dynamics studies by #crystallography, such as with #XFEL sources. Our study shows how dynamics is impacted in the crystal.
📢New paper: Dynamic disorder is crucial for mitochondrial protein import
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Exciting research increasingly points to the key role of dynamics in the machinery that brings proteins into #mitochondria. We review the emerging picture of dynamics in #protein import
Aromatic rings can rotate by 180° -- so-called ring flips -- but to do so their surrounding needs to make some space. These collective dynamic modes are sometimes called "breathing motions", a poorly defined term that has been around for 45 years. But what is this? And does it exist in crystals?
We combined NMR spectroscopy in solution and in crystals, and crystallography (including at room temperature), and MD simulations.
Our key finding: aromatic ring flips are massively slowed down by the crystal. More than 1000x slower than in solution!
Returning from an amazing Proteostasis meeting, with lots of new ideas & grateful for great feedback about our mitochondrial-import work.
Traveling back from Frankfurt to Vienna by train, I am reminded of the CO2-emissions savings of train vs. plane travel. Also in 2026, I won't take a plane.
New publication:
mr.copernicus.org/articles/7/2...
Congrats to Lea Becker for this work, which she lead from the experiment design to the manuscript. Amazing to work with PhD students like Lea.
We show how to accelerate 19F solid-state #NMR experiments, with application to a 0.5 MDa large protein.
Methodology of our train vs plane CO2 emissions are published in our analysis of conference travel:
mr.copernicus.org/articles/6/2...
📢 New publication.
We answered an old question in structural biology: (how) does the crystal lattice impact proteins? In particular, how does the crystal restrict the protein's dynamics?
We used local probes of dynamics: the rotation of aromatic rings. 🧵
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The extent to which crystal packing constrains protein dynamics is hard to decipher. Now a combination of NMR, crystallography and molecular dynamics simulations show that intermolecular contacts can ...
