Franz-Ulrich Hartl
Co-PI (Core Leadership)
Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry
Ulrich Hartl is a director at Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry and a Professor at Munich University. He studied intracellular protein transport as a postdoc with Walter Neupert and Bill Wickner. His research focuses on the role of molecular chaperones in protein folding and the mechanisms of diseases associated with protein aggregation. Among his awards are the Lasker Award and the Breakthrough Prize, which he shared with Arthur Horwich.
Recent ASAP Preprints & Published Papers
Structural analyses define the molecular basis of clusterin chaperone function
**Clusterin, a conserved secretory glycoprotein abundant in blood plasma and cerebrospinal fluid, functions as a molecular chaperone and apolipoprotein. Dysregulation of clusterin is linked to late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular pathology and cancer. Despite its prominent role in extracellular proteostasis, the chaperone mechanism of clusterin has remained unclear. Here we present…
Autophagy preferentially degrades non-fibrillar polyQ aggregates.
Aggregation of proteins containing expanded polyglutamine (polyQ) repeats is the cytopathologic hallmark of a group of dominantly inherited neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntington’s disease (HD). Huntingtin (Htt), the disease protein of HD, forms amyloid-like fibrils by liquid-to-solid phase transition. Macroautophagy has been proposed to clear polyQ aggregates, but the efficiency of…
