Elisabeth Knust

Elisabeth Knust (born January 9, 1951 ) is a German cell and developmental biologist and has been director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics since 2007 . She researches the development and maintenance of epithelial cell polarity .

Life

Knust studied biology at the University of Düsseldorf. There she received her doctorate in 1979. rer. nat. She was a research assistant at the Institute for Clinical Virology, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and a research assistant at the Institute for Developmental Biology at the University of Cologne . In 1988 she completed her habilitation in developmental biology at the University of Cologne. After a research stay as a Heisenberg fellow at the University of Colorado in Boulder, she was professor at the Institute for Developmental Biology at the University of Cologne between 1990 and 1996 and head of the Institute for Genetics at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf between 1996 and 2006 .

Since 2007 she has been honorary professor for developmental biology at the Technical University of Dresden and director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden. In 2019 she retired. From 2009–2013, Knust was Vice President of the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Act

Knust is primarily concerned with the spatial differentiation of cells, which as "cell polarity" is of central importance in the development of organisms. Closely related to this topic are her research on the genetic basis of retinal degeneration, which she mainly carries out on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster .

Knust's group identified and characterized a protein complex, the Crumbs / Crb protein complex, which is essential for maintaining epithelial cell polarity. All known members of this complex are preserved from fly to man. Loss of its function leads to the breakdown of many epithelia in the developing Drosophila embryo. In addition, mutations in the respective genes lead to retinal degeneration, that is, the flies become blind. This is remarkable because mutations in one of the human Crb genes, Crb1, lead to retinitis pigmentosa (RP12), a disease that is associated with retinal degeneration and blindness. The research work in the group of Knust aims to elucidate the cell and molecular biological basis of the mode of action of these genes. It is to be expected that these findings will also contribute to understanding the causes of human disease.