Former Professors & Group Leaders

Brunner

Development of new photo-labeling and crosslinking techniques for studying complex systems, in particular biological membranes.

Photoactivatable lipids as tools for studying lipid second messenger function(s).

Mechanistic studies of protein-mediated membrane fusion.

Carafoli

At present, I am Professor at the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Padova, Italy, and Scientific Director of the Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine, Italy. For detailed information on my scientific activity please visit my web page.

Di Iorio

Teaching continues to be one of my major interests and keeps me busy at the Italian people's university UNITRE in Basle. I'm also member of the Commissione Consultiva at the Dipartimento della Formazione e dell'Apprendimento in Locarno and expert at the Liceo Cantonale in Mendrisio. Concerning research, my interests are moving from biophysical chemistry to engineering in the field of solar energy.

Ellgard

We work on two main topics – i) oxidative protein folding in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of mammalian cells, in particular the function of the thiol-disulfide oxidoreductases of the protein disulfide isomerase family that catalyze disulfide-bond formation, and ii) the degradation of misfolded ER proteins, the so-called ER-associated degradation (ERAD) process. Here, we specifically focus on redox-dependent steps involved in substrate recognition and retrotranslocation to the cytosol, where misfolded substrates are degraded by the proteasome. For additional information, please visit our web page.

Gotta

We are interested in understanding how cell polarity and spindle positioning are regulated. Cell polarity is involved in many aspects of cell and developmental biology such as differentiation, proliferation and morphogenesis in both unicellular and multicellular organisms. During asymmetric cell divisions, spindle positioning must be coupled to cell polarity to properly segregate localized cell fate determinants.

Hauser

Our work is focused on the mechanism of lipid uptake in the small intestine. Lipid uptake is the transfer of dietary lipids (cholesterol, triacylglycerols) from various donor particles to the small-intestinal brush border membrane.

We have shown that for most dietary lipids this process is protein-mediated. Part of our work focuses on the development of inhibitors of small intestinal lipid uptake.

Lutz

We are interested in understanding the roles of naturally occurring antibodies (NAbs). We have focused on the roles of tissue homeostatic NAbs required in clearance of senescent and oxidatively stressed red blood cells in healthy and anemic humans and found that the same NAbs also have deleterious effects in malaria. Now we investigate those NAbs that modulate complement amplification of which some have the potential to down regulate complement amplification. We study yet another group of NAbs, which, despite having a beneficial role in modulating an immune response, have disease promoting effects in the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS).

Martoglio

Our work is focused on the fate and function of signal sequences after they have been cleaved from the precursor protein by signal peptidase. We study how liberated signal sequences are further processed in the ER membrane and investigate functions of resulting signal peptide fragments.
Our group also attempts to identify and characterize proteases that cleave substrates within transmembrane segments. We thereby concentrate on signal peptide peptidase and g-secretase that is involved in the production of amyloidogenic peptide Ab.

Semenza

Four main activities should be mentioned:

• elucidate the mechanism of secondary active transport across brush border membranes, as well as the biochemistry, cell biology and pathophysiology of intestinal disaccharidases
• contribute to developing the potentialities of Atomic Force Microscopy in the investigation of biological objects
• full Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Milan Medical School
• managing editor of the FEBS Letters (of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies) for 16 years; since 2000, Honorary Chairman of the journal’s Editorial Board

Winterhalter