Our lab focusses on molecular mechanisms of disease that involve:

  • differential subcellular compartmentalization
  • differential protein shuttling
  • differential protein complex formation and stoichiometries

 

All of which may constitute relevant pathomechanisms of disease beyond alterations in protein expression and may be critical for cell motility in general and cancer cell invasion and metastasis in particular.

Our tools, quantitative fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy, are especially well suited to address questions related to these molecular mechanisms.

 

 

Cancer cell invasion

Positioning and deformability of the cancer cell nucleus may be prerequisites of cancer cell invasion and metastasis.

e.g. Renz BMC Res Notes 2020

Protein mobility and compartmentalization

Differential compartmentalization may differentiate disease from normal and may be critical in cancer cell motility.

e.g. Renz et al. Int J Cancer 2008

Protein oligomerization and complex formation

Differential complex formation may be related to disease, more specifically avalanche-like shifts in oligomerization may abruptely change ligand specificity and may thereby be related to liver disease in pregnancy, including pre-eclampsia.

e.g. Renz et al. PNAS 2012

Tools of fluorescence microscopy

Evaluation and development of quantitative fluorescence microscopy, including approaches to single-molecule counting and determine photoactivation efficiency of fluorescent proteins.

e.g. Renz et al. Biophys J 2011, Renz et al. PNAS 2012, Renz et al. Cyto A 2018