Structure & Function of Molecular Machines

Three-dimensional structures of human mitochondrial transcription complexes.

We are a research lab located at the University Medical Center Göttingen and at the Max-Planck-Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences Göttingen.

Our research is aimed at understanding how genetic information is decoded and expressed in human cells, and how this process is linked to human diseaseWe are particularly interested in how genes are activated in mitochondria, the powerhouses of our cells.

To study this, we use ultra-cold electron microscopes (a.k.a. cryo-EM) and high-energy X-Ray beams (a.k.a. X-Ray crystallography) to visualize molecular “nanomachines” in 3D at near-atomic resolution.

News from the Lab

Our paper on human tRNA 3′ processing is published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology

Our paper on the mechanism of 3′ processing of human mitochondrial and nuclear tRNAs is now published in Nature Structural and Molecular...

New preprint on the structural basis of Nipah virus replication

We published a preprint describing cryo-EM structures of the Nipah Virus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase complex, both in its apo and its actively...

Lea Trost joins as a PhD student

Lea decided to stay in our group as a PhD student after finishing her Master thesis! We are very happy to have her and wish her good luck and lots of...

Website artwork by Arjun Bhatta