Open Positions

News

1. Januar

Two new stars are born! We all congratulate Nico Thoma and Johannes Strohmeyer for successfully passing their Master Exam.

15. September

'Bienvenue' or "welkom' to Joost te Riet from the University of Nijmegen.
As an EMBO fellow Joost will stay at our lab for 3 months and work on a cell adhesion project.

1. September

A very warm 'benvenuta' to Barbara Sorce. Barbara is a postdoc and Marie Curie Fellow (FP7-SBMP) coming form the University of Bologna and Lecce. In our lab Barbara will develop new nanotechnological approaches to study the mechanics of single cells.

1. September

1. September 2011
A big welcome to Miao Yu. Miao is our new PhD student sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In our lab Miao will characterize membrane receptors regulating cell adhesion.

15. August 2011

A very warm 'bienvenue' to Viciane Grimard from the University of Brussels. As EMBO fellow Viciane will stay at our lab for 3 months and work on a single-molecule force spectroscopy project.

5. May 2011

A new star is born! We all congratulate Susanne Wegmann for passing her successful PhD exams at the ETH Zürich. After all formalities have been done she will be the NEW Dr. in our lab. The photo shows Susanne at the beginning of extensive celebrations. Photos at later stage may be available upon request ;-)

15. April 2011

We welcome Iordan Iordanov as a temporary labmember of our group. Iordan is a Marie-Curie-Fellow (FP 7) and performs his PhD at the University Toulouse, France. In our lab Iordan will perform single-molecule studies to characterize structural and functional properties of membrane proteins he prepared for NMR studies.

1. March 2011

We congratulate Clemens Möller for accepting his full professorship in biophysics at the Life Sciences Faculty at the Albstadt-Sigmaringen University, Germany. Clemens was the first PhD student of our lab and gained considerable experience as research group leader at the pharmacological industry. More info at: http://www.hs-albsig.de

1. February 2011

A very welcome to Ulf Hensen, our new scientist on the block!!! Ulf hast obtained his PhD at MPI of Biophysical Chemistry Göttingen. In the scientific group of Helmut Grubmüller, Ulf has worked using and developing tools for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of proteins. Infos at http://www.mpibpc.mpg.de/home/grubmueller/index.html

1. December 2010

We congratulate Harald Janovjak for his new position as Assistant Professor at the I.S.T. Austria.
Harald was one of the first PhD students at our laboratory and did a great postdoc at Berkeley. Infos at http://www.ist.ac.at/research/research-groups/janovjak-group/

23. November 2010

We congratulate Michael Krieg for receiving the Deutscher Studienpreis of the Körber-Stiftung.
The price will give Michael a great time at USA. From December 2010 on Michael will join the Stanford School of Medicine as a postdoc.

03. November 2010

We welcome our new lab member Nico Strohmeyer.
Nico is a Master student of our lab.

02. November 2010

We congratulate Martin Stewart, Jonne Helenius and Ramanthan Subramaniam to their newest paper "Hydrostatic pressure and the actomyosin cortex drive mitotic cell rounding" which was accepted by Nature!

01. November 2010

We welcome our new lab member Moritz Pfreundschuh.
Moritz is a PhD student of the Molecular Life Science Graduate School of ETH and University Zürich.

01. Oktober 2010

We welcome our new lab member Cédric Cattin.
Cédric is a PhD student who received his Msc in Nanosciences at the University of Basel.

PhD Student Positions in Cellular Bionanotechnology/Biophysics

Quantifying interactions that functionally regulate membrane receptors of living cells

Cells express and regulate membrane proteins to control whether or not, how strong and how long they adhere to the surfaces they encounter. Such cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) are membrane receptors that do not only form adhesive interactions, but also activate signal transduction pathways and regulate cellular processes. In regulatory processes termed ‘crosstalk’, CAMs regulate the activity of other CAMs. This allows the cell to actively adapt its adhesion properties to the environment. In a first attempt we develop a single-cell force spectroscopy (SCFS) based approach to initially characterize one such crosstalk pathway. This PhD project attempts to further develop and apply SCFS to characterize in depth how CAMs are regulated by crosstalk. In addition to the regulation of CAMs, the SCFS assays will allow us to determine how extracellular signals such as ligand-binding to membrane receptors regulate other receptors that control the adhesive properties of cells.

Multifunctional high-resolution force-field imaging of native membrane receptors

High-resolution microscopy (≈1nm) tools that allow the structural characterization of native membrane protein assemblies are rare. However, multifunctional high-resolution microscopic and spectroscopic approaches that allow to structurally observe the cell membrane and to simultaneously quantify their specific and unspecific interactions do not exist. In this PhD project we intend to develop and establish multifunctional high-resolution tools that allow to image single native membrane proteins of complex assemblies at subnanometer resolution and to quantify the interactions that guide the membrane protein assembly and function. We want to structurally map the interactions of membrane proteins with their environment and map the interactions inside membrane proteins that switch their functional state. Therefore we establish a new nanoscopic tool that images biological membranes at a resolution ≤ 1nm and simultaneously maps the interactions of the hosted membrane proteins in three dimensions. With this new multifunctional tool future researchers will be able to provide structural and quantitative insights into basic biological processes of the cell membrane.

We search for highly motivated candidates to work in an inspiring multidisciplinary field that combined engineering, biophysics, cell biology and molecular biology. The candidates should have a strong background in physics, biophysics and molecular biology. They will be coached by a vibrating consortium of international experts such as needed to perform an excellent PhD project.

Please send two hardcopies of your application including CV, publication list and three letters of recommendation to

Prof. Dr. Daniel Müller
ETH Zurich, D-BSSE
Mattenstrasse 26
4058 Basel, Switzerland

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER READING

• Müller DJ, Helenius J, Alsteens D, Dufrene YF. Force probing surfaces of living cells to molecular resolution. Nature Chemical Biology (2009) 5, 383-390.

• Müller DJ, Dufrene YF. Atomic force microscopy as a multifunctional molecular toolbox in nanobiotechnology. Nature Nanotechnology (2008) 3, 261-269.

Master thesis research project

Studying human communication channel gating by single-molecule force spectroscopy

The Biophysics group (Prof. D. J. Müller) at the D-BSSE, ETH Zürich, offers a position for a master thesis in the field of single-molecule biophysics and nanoscience.
The proposed project is based on our previous research on vertebrate cell-cell communication channels - connexins. This family of membrane proteins forms so-called gap junction communication channels. These channels are highly conserved and involved in many vital processes, such as action potential propagation in heart muscle and ion homeostasis. Connexin-based communication channels are regulated by various stimuli, such as pH or Ca2+. Recently, we could visualize gating of Connexin 26 (Cx26) by high-resolution atomic force microscopy (AFM) and showed that Cx26 hemichannels can undergo significant conformational changes at the extracellular surface.
During the last decade we established single-molecule force spectroscopy on membrane proteins. This approach allows deciphering intra- and intermolecular interactions of membrane proteins. By applying a mechanical stretching force unfolding of membrane proteins is induced. The force-distance relationship of the unfolding process quantifies and locates the interactions of the membrane protein. These interactions provide fundamental insight into how interactions switch the conformational and function of communication channels.
The aim of the offered master thesis project is to investigate the inter- and intramolecular interaction that switch human Cx26 communication channels from the open to the closed state. The experiments will be done with state-of-the-art single-molecule force spectroscopy.

For further questions and applications please contact:

Prof. Daniel Müller
ETH Zürich
Mattenstr. 26
CH-4053 Basel
email: daniel.mueller@bsse.ethz.ch