From small molecules to complex organelles

Latest News

February 10, 2023 Shuffled ATG8 interacting motifs form an ancestral bridge between UFMylation and autophagy Researchers led by Yasin Dagdas (GMI) and Elif Karagöz (Max Perutz Labs) uncover a molecular switch that regulates autophagy in plants. Combining evolutionary analysis with a mechanistic experimental approach, they demonstrate that this regulatory mechanism is conserved in eukaryotes. The findings are now published in the EMBO Journal. Read more →
February 9, 2023 Structural basis for regulation of apoptosis and autophagy by the BIRC6/SMAC complex The enormous protein BIRC6 plays an important role in preventing programmed cell death. Scientists from the lab of Tim Clausen at the IMP now showed that BIRC6’s structure holds the key for regulating cell death, but also for cell survival pathways. Their findings are published in the journal Science. Read more →
December 16, 2022 Tim Clausen among Allen Distinguished Investigators 2022 A collaboration between Tim Clausen, Senior Scientist at the IMP and member of our Special Research Program, together with Janine Kirstein at the University of Bremen, was selected for the Allen Distinguished Investigators Program 2022. Read more →

About the Program

Targeted Protein Degradation: From small molecules to complex organelles

Our Special Research Program is a collaborative research platform to unravel how proteins are targeted for degradation. We focus on the two major cellular proteolytic pathways, the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) and autophagy, and the crosstalk between them in the cytoplasm and in the nucleus. Furthermore, we investigate how small molecules can be used to chemically reprogram the degradation systems, enabling the targeted proteolysis of selected proteins in a spatially and temporally controlled manner …

Selected Publications

2022 Functional E3 ligase hotspots and resistance mechanisms to small-molecule degraders Nature Chemical Biology Hanzl A, Casement R, Imrichova H, Hughes SJ, Barone E, Testa A, Bauer S, Wright J, Brand M, Ciulli A, Winter GE Go to publication →
2022 BacPROTACs mediate targeted protein degradation in bacteria Cell Morreale FE, Kleine S, Leodolter J, Junker S, Hoi DM, Ovchinnikov S, Okun A, Kley J, Kurzbauer R, Junk L, Guha S, Podlesainski D, Kazmaier U, Boehmelt G, Weinstabl H, Rumpel K, Schmiedel VM, Hartl M, Haselbach D, Meinhart A, Kaiser M, Clausen T Go to publication →
2020 A cross-kingdom conserved ER-phagy receptor maintains endoplasmic reticulum homeostasis during stress eLife Stephani M, Picchianti L, Gajic A, Beveridge R, Skarwan R, Sanchez de Medina Hernandez V, Mohseni A, Clavel M, Zeng Y, Naumann C, Matuszkiewicz M, Turco E, Loefke C, Li B, Durnberger G, Schutzbier M, Chen HT, Abdrakhmanov A, Savova A, Chia KS, Djamei A, Schaffner I, Abel S, Jiang L, Mechtler K, Ikeda F, Martens S, Clausen T, Dagdas Y Go to publication →

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