Max Planck Institute for Biophysics

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Max Planck Institute for Biophysics
Max Planck Institute for Biophysics
New building on the Riedberg campus
Category: research Institute
Carrier: Max Planck Society
Legal form of the carrier: Registered association
Seat of the wearer: Munich
Facility location: Frankfurt am Main
Type of research: Basic research
Subjects: Natural sciences
Areas of expertise: Biophysics , structural biology
Basic funding: Federal government (50%), states (50%)
Management: Hartmut Michel , managing director
Homepage: www.biophys.mpg.de/en.html

The Max Planck Institute for Biophysics ( MPIBP ) is a research facility of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science based in Frankfurt am Main .

The main area of research is to study the functioning of membrane proteins and transport by means of suitable physical methods such as high resolution electron microscopy or X-ray structural analysis of protein crystals (see also Biophysics ).

The MPI for Biophysics has been located in a new building on the Riedberg campus of the Goethe University in the north of the city since March 2003 . At the end of 2016, a total of 178 employees were working at the institute, including 48 scientists and 50 young scientists. The Nobel Prize winner Hartmut Michel has been director of the institute since 1987.

history

The forerunner of today's institute was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biophysics, which had existed since 1937 and which in turn emerged from the "Institute for Physical Basics of Medicine" founded in 1921 by Frankfurt citizens as part of the Oswalt Foundation and headed by Friedrich Dessauer . In 1934, after Dessauer's forced emigration, his long-time colleague Boris Rajewsky , who is considered the founder of biophysics , was appointed new director . In 1937 the institute was converted into a "Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biophysics" and moved to Forsthausstrasse 70 - the "Aryanized" former Villa Speyer . Research was mainly carried out on the effects of radioactive radiation on humans and their possible medical use, as well as on aerosols.

After the Second World War, the institute was reopened in 1948 as the "Max Planck Institute for Biophysics". With the retirement of Boris Rajewsky in 1966 and the reappointment of Reinhard Schlögl in 1965, research shifted away from working with radioactive radiation towards investigating the "transport of substances through biological and artificial membranes". With the subsequent appointment of Karl Julius Ullrich in 1967 and finally in 1968 Hermann Passow as new directors at the institute, the management of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics also developed away from the classic one-director institute to a more modern directorate. The main focus of research was (and still is) the investigation of the cell membrane and its building blocks, the membrane proteins (and especially the transport proteins). The cell membranes and the proteins have been and are being examined using the most modern physical methods at the time, including:

  • X-ray crystallography
  • high resolution electron microscopy
  • Spectroscopy

This development was, especially after the retirement of Passow and Ullrich in 1993 and Schlögl in 1996, through the appointment of a new generation of directors, in 1987 by Hartmut Michel (Dept. of Molecular Membrane Biology), in 1993 by Ernst Bamberg (Dept. Biophysical Chemistry) and in 1996 by Werner Kühlbrandt ( Department of Structural Biology). The award of the Nobel Prize to Hartmut Michel in 1988 confirmed this new direction as groundbreaking worldwide. Even today there is no other research institute with this exclusive focus on researching membrane proteins. In March 2003, the institute moved out of its old premises in downtown Frankfurt as the natural science faculties of the University of Frankfurt moved to the “green field”. The new building in Max-von-Laue-Str. 3 on the Riedberg university campus represents great progress for the scientists (see also under architecture). With the appointment of Gerhard Hummer to a department for theoretical biophysics in 2013, the development of an institute size of four departments that is typical today in the Max Planck Society was completed.

Organization and structure

The MPIBP consists of four departments with various subgroups:

  • Departments:
Structural and functional studies on membrane proteins from the respiratory chain (e.g. cytochrome bc1) and photosynthesis as well as on G-protein-coupled receptors using X-ray structure analysis of protein crystals. However, other selected membrane proteins are also being investigated, e.g. B. the enzymes that participate in the methane metabolism of archaebacteria .
  • Structural biology (head: Werner Kühlbrandt since 1997):
Research into membrane and transport proteins (e.g. osmoregulating transporters) using two-dimensional crystallization, electron crystallographic structure elucidation and high-resolution electron microscopy as well as image analysis of larger macromolecular complexes. The working group also tries to develop new imaging methods in structural biology.
  • Biophysical chemistry (Head: Ernst Bamberg since 1993, em. June 30, 2016):
Functional analysis of transport proteins such as B. the sodium / potassium ATPase or carrier proteins of eukaryotic and prokaryotic origin by means of stationary and time-resolved electrical or electrophysiological methods in combination with time-resolved fluorescence techniques. This working group also deals with nanobiophysics and nanobiotechnology.
  • Theoretical Biophysics (Head: Gerhard Hummer, since 2013)
  • Molecular Sociology (Head: Martin Beck, since 2019)
  • Molecular Neurogenetics (Head: Peter Mombaerts until 2010):
Neurogenetics of olfactory systems
  • Independent research groups
  • Molecular Biophysics (Head: Ernst Grell)
Molecular mechanisms of active and selective cation transport of membrane proteins based on thermodynamic and kinetic studies

What all groups have in common is that they use modern genetic engineering methods to produce different variants of the genes to be examined in order to be able to determine the function of individual amino acids .

International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS)

The MPI has operated the International Max Planck Research School for Structure and Function of Biological Membranes from 2000 to 2012 . An International Max Planck Research School is an English-language doctoral program . This IMPRS was one of the first to be founded. Other participants in the IMPRS are the Goethe University Frankfurt and the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research . The MPI for Biophysics is still involved in the International Max Planck Research School for Neural Circuits , which has existed since 2011 and which is supposed to accept ten doctoral students every year. This IMPRS is anchored at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and is organized in cooperation with several other neuroscientific institutes in Frankfurt, such as the Goethe University Frankfurt, the Ernst Strüngmann Institute and the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies .

architecture

The functional new building of the MPIBP on the Riedberg university campus is divided into two halves by an entrance hall running continuously in an east-west direction. The institute's laboratories and other research facilities are located in the northern half, while the offices and meeting rooms for the scientists and administration are located in the southern half from the first floor. For quick communication, the two halves are connected by bridges that span the entrance hall. The architects of the new building were the architects of Auer Weber .

Others

  • Since the MPIBP was founded, one of the directors has also been a professor at the Goethe University in Frankfurt.
  • In cooperation with other MPIs (for biochemistry, medical research and molecular physiology) it operates its own beamline at the Swiss Light Source (SLS) in Switzerland, "one of the most modern and powerful synchrotron radiation sources of the" third generation "in Europe" (Source) in order to avoid the normally long waiting times for a measurement. With the sharply focused and intense synchrotron radiation (X-ray radiation), large protein complexes, among other things , should be better able to be examined by X-ray structure analysis.

literature

  • Boris Rajewsky and colleagues: Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main in: Yearbook of the Max Planck Society 1961, Part II, Göttingen 1962, pages 154–214 (extensive description of the history and results of the institute by Rajewsky and Employees)
  • Kaiser Wilhelm / Max Planck Institute for Biophysics (Max Planck Institute for Biophysics) , in: Eckart Henning , Marion Kazemi : Handbook on the history of the institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm / Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science 1911–2011 - Data and sources , Berlin 2016, 2 volumes, volume 1: Institutes and research centers A – L ( online, PDF, 75 MB ), pages 272–289 (chronology of the institute).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ About the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics .
  2. ↑ International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) ( Memento of the original dated February 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.biophys.mpg.de
  3. ^ IMPRS: Graduate Studies
  4. ^ IMPRS: Faculty

Coordinates: 50 ° 10 ′ 25 ″  N , 8 ° 37 ′ 49 ″  E