Klopfenstein, Dieter, Dr.

• Dr. phil. nat. (Ph.D.) University of Basel, 1999
• Postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Francisco, 1999 - 2003
• Since 2003 head of an independent Junior Research Group

Major Research Interests
The long-range transport of membrane organelles in neurons depends primarily upon microtubules and motor proteins that move unidirectionally along these tracks. One type of microtubule-based motor proteins powering membrane transport is the kinesin superfamily. We are interested in how these motors achieve specificity in cargo binding, elicit membrane transport, and the regulation of transport activity. One example of a kinesin motor is UNC-104/KIF1A, which specifically transports presynaptic vesicle to the synaptic terminal and binds with its tail domain directly to membrane lipids in vitro. This unique cargo-interaction mechanism help us to understand how lipids and their membrane environment contribute to cargo transport, how motor-lipid interaction could be regulating transport, and how accessory proteins contribute to membrane motility. Using fluorescently tagged motor and vesicle markers we investigate these questions in the nervous system of the nematode C. elegans serves us as a model system for microscopic tools (confocal, TIRF, FRET FLIM) and biochemical transport assays in vitro.

Homepage Department/Research Group
http://www.uni-bc.gwdg.de/index.php

ORCID: 0000-0002-9107-3576