Beat Vogeli
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Biophysics
Human cells are large, yet they must deliver organelles, vesicles and RNA–protein packages to the right places. Motor proteins called kinesin and dynein do this by walking along microtubules, the cell's internal tracks.
- Fields
Biophysics
Biochemistry
Neuroscience
- Topics
intracellular transport
dynein
kinesin
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2030
What they work on
- Determine how the dynein light intermediate chain (LIC), a flexible disordered region, works with cargo-specific adaptor proteins and phosphorylation to let a single cytoplasmic dynein carry many different cargoes, using NMR and other biophysical methods.
- Elucidate how Pin1, a cell regulator with high flexibility between its domains, influences interactions between dynein LIC and adaptor proteins.
- Test how human-specific Olduvai domains, disordered regions of Neuroblastoma Breaking Point Family proteins, modulate neuronal transport by the kinesin KIF5A, using NMR, in vitro motility and cell-based assays.
More about the research
Many of the proteins that control these motors contain intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), flexible segments with no fixed shape. Snapshot methods such as cryo-electron microscopy or AI structure prediction cannot fully capture how these segments work. Faulty transport has been linked to neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disease, so explaining how these flexible regions function matters for understanding the brain.
Why it matters
Faulty dynein regulation has been implicated in nervous system disorders and colon cancer. Olduvai domain copy number is linked to human brain size, schizophrenia and autism. Explaining how flexible protein segments steer intracellular transport could connect these genetic features to disease mechanisms. It may also suggest where transport goes wrong in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative conditions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Katerina Cermakova
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Biochemistry
Determine how chromatin and transcription state influence RNA export of highly transcribed genes, by rapidly manipulating the IDR-domain interaction in living cells and measuring nascent RNA and genomic outcomes.
Shahar Sukenik
Syracuse University, NY·Biophysics
Determine when the structural preferences of disordered regions in transcription factors affect their function, by linking ensemble structure to transcriptional activity in live cells.
David Eliezer
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Biophysics
Determine the structure of a membrane-induced toxic tau oligomer, a small clump of the Alzheimer's-linked protein tau that forms on membranes, using solid-state NMR and ESR spectroscopy.
The school
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus: 41 labs on PI Pages, $766M a year on research, 205 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus
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