Background pattern of a brain with neural connections
Ruben Fernandez-Busnadiego

Ruben Fernandez-Busnadiego

Co-PI (Core Leadership)

University of Gottingen

Dr. Ruben Fernandez-Busnadiego received his undergraduate degree in Physics from the Complutense University of Madrid. He carried out his PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, investigating synaptic structure by cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET). Later on, as a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Medicine, he studied various aspects of membrane biology in neurons. He then returned to the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry to lead a group investigating the structural links between protein aggregation and cell death in neurodegenerative diseases. Since 2019, he is a Professor at the University Medical Center Göttingen. His group continues to employ cutting edge cryo-ET to investigate in situ the structural basis of cellular function and disease-related dysfunction.

Teams

Harper

Themes

Circuitry and Brain-Body Interactions

Tags

Mouse Microscopy - optical Ex Vivo Two-Photon Microscopy

Recent ASAP Preprints & Published Papers

Structural remodeling of the mitochondrial protein biogenesis machinery under proteostatic stress

Cells have evolved organelle-specific responses to maintain protein homeostasis (proteostasis). During proteostatic stress, mitochondria downregulate translation and enhance protein folding, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly defined. Here, we employed cryo-electron tomography to observe the structural consequences of mitochondrial proteostatic stress within human cells. We detected protein aggregates within the…

Temporal control of acute protein aggregate turnover by UBE3C and NRF1-dependent proteasomal pathways

A hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases is the progressive loss of proteostasis, leading to the accumulation of misfolded proteins or protein aggregates, with subsequent cytotoxicity. To combat this toxicity, cells have evolved degradation pathways (ubiquitin-proteasome system and autophagy) that detect and degrade misfolded proteins. However, studying the underlying cellular pathways and…

Team Harper

J. Wade Harper

J. Wade Harper

Lead PI (Core Leadership)
Ruben Fernandez-Busnadiego

Ruben Fernandez-Busnadiego

Co-PI (Core Leadership)
Judith Frydman

Judith Frydman

Co-PI (Core Leadership)
Franz-Ulrich Hartl

Franz-Ulrich Hartl

Co-PI (Core Leadership)
Brenda Schulman

Brenda Schulman

Co-PI (Core Leadership)
Frances Hundley

Frances Hundley

Project Manager

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