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Open Positions
News
31. May 2013
Congratulations to David Alsteens for being awarded a long-term EMBO postdoctoral fellowship. David will join our lab soon to work on the multifunctional high-resolution imaging of human receptors.
25. - 28. April 2013
Again we go for retreat at the Lago di Como (Italy). Excellent science, food, drinks, culture and discussions. Meaningful pictures are available on the group file server.
26. April 2013
A big big good bye and a farewell to Christian Bippes. After having been for more than 8 years with the lab Christian decided to join Nanosurf, an AFM company close to Basel. After having beeing inspired by Christians art of cooking every labmember gave her/his best to prepare a speciality of the home country. It was a long evening we enjoyed Swiss, Italian, German, Spanish, Indian, Scottish, US, Argentinian, Chinese, Finnish, Armenian and Russian food. It was fantastic and Christian is welcome to join and leave the lab as often as he can ;-)) Best wishes from us all to Christian - it was wonderful having you as colleague!
15. - 18. April 2013
Global challenges - Opportunities for Nanotechnology! We organize the workshop for PhD students and postdocs at San Servolo at Venice, Italy. The organisators Christoph Gerber from the Swiss Nanoscience Institute (Basel), Hermann Gaub from the Center for Nanoscience (CeNS, Munich), and we from the ETH Zurich together with the Jean-Marie Lehn, Gerd Binnig and Viola Vogel coached the PhD students and postdocs to foster the awareness for the global challenges by an analysis of the current major problems. More information can be found at: http://www.cens.de/international/joint-workshops/globalchallenges13/
15. April 2013
Welcome to Richard Newton from Scotland (we learn that this does not mean that Rich is from England!!!). Rich is our newest, youngest and xxxx PhD student.
2. April 2013
Welcome to Roland Goers! Roland joins our group as a master student. He will do his master thesis together with Wolfgang Meiers group (Uni Basel) and Dimitrios Fotiadis group (Uni Bern).
26. January 2013
Good bye and farewell to Michael Zocher. After having been working, publishing, and graduating Michael decided that its time to support innovations. He will continue his career as a patent attorney at Munich. Good luck, have fun, and go and staple as much money as you can! ;-)
07. January 2013
Happy new year and a very warm welcome to our new PhD students Alessandra Franchino (Italy) and Estefania Mulvihill (Argentina/Italy). Alessandra received her Masters in molecular and cellular biotechnology from the University Milano and after this worked shortly in a biotech company at the Netherlands. Estefania received her masters in biotechnolgy from the university of Florence.
06. January 2013
Kings of the Day
03. January 2013
We sadly say goodbye to Izhar Medalsy. Izhar will join Bruker at Santa Barbara to participate in the development of new AFMs. We will miss him! Mazel tov Izhar!!!
8. Oct 2012
Double congratulations to David Martinez Martin. David received a prestigious EMBO postdoctoral fellowship and the research award from the Spanish Royal Academy.
17. Sept 2012
We welcome David Martinez Martin who will be a new postdoc of our group. David has an impressive background on building different AFM for the multifunctional high-resolution imaging. In a joint project with Christoph Gerber and Tony Hyman David will develop a new AFM for biophysical measurements.
4. July 2012
The triple PhD is done! Gratulations to Shiho, Michael, and Martin who all three passed their PhD exams and got their crown ;-)
2. July 2012
PhD defense of Michael Zocher at Basel.
1. July 2012
Welcome Tania! From today on Tania Serdiuk will join our laboratory as PhD student. Tania did her masters at Kiev National Taras Shevchenko University, Ukraine, and at the Institute of Nanotechnologies INSA, Lyon, France.
29. June 2012
PhD defense of Martin Stewart at Dresden.
28. June 2012
PhD defense of Shiho Kawamura at Basel.
27. June 2012
We congratulate David Martinez Martin for being awarded by a long-term EMBO postdoctoral fellowship. David will join our lab soon to develop a new promising nanotechnology to quantify cellular processes.
22-24. March 2012
Group retreat at the lake of Como, Italy.
20. January 2012
Gratulations to Patrick Bosshart who today passed his PhD exams. The extensive party destroyed many brain cells of (formerly) talented students ;-) Pictures are under censorship and available from patrick who is now joining the Dimitrios Fotiadis group at the University of Berne.
January 2012
We welcome our new PhD students Mitasha Bharadwaj (India) and Rafayel Petrosyan (Armenia). Mitasha received her MSc Biotechnology from the Amity University, New Delhi. Rafayel received his MSc Nanobiophysics from the TU Dresden, Germany.
1. Januar 2012
Two new stars are born! We all congratulate Johannes Thoma and Nico Strohmeyer for successfully passing their Master Exam.
15. September 2011
'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 2011
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 2011
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
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