Welcome Filip Van Petegem!
Dr. Filip Van Petegem, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, has been awarded a prestigious Humboldt Research Award to spend six months beginning in June as a guest researcher in Misha Kudryashev’s In Situ Structural Biology lab. The award recognizes internationally leading researchers whose discoveries have had a lasting impact on their field. Recipients receive €80,000 and are invited to spend up to a year conducting research in Germany.
Van Petegem studies ion channels — specialized proteins that span cell membranes and control cellular signaling by allowing charged ions to pass in and out of the cell. His laboratory in Vancouver focuses on understanding how these channels function at the molecular level, and how defects in them contribute to disease. Many cardiac arrhythmias, for example, are caused by faulty ion channels in heart muscle cells, which disrupt electrical signaling.
Studying proteins inside cells
At the Max Delbrück Center, he will use cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) to answer one of the field’s most important outstanding questions: how these channels behave in their native environment. In his own lab, Van Petegem typically studies purified proteins. Cryo-EM and Cryo-ET, however, carry the advantage of being able to create detailed images of proteins while they are still embedded inside cells.
“Misha’s lab has a lot of expertise in these technologies, particularly the computational component,” says Van Petegem. By combining his expertise in ion channel biology with the Kudryashev group’s strengths in both technologies and computational image analysis, he hopes to gain new insights into the proteins that form ion channels.
He is also planning to use the technology to test potential drug candidates by studying in greater detail how they either bind to ion channels or change their behavior.
Text: Gunjan Sinha
