The BRAINSTRUC Consortium

The five BRAINSTRUC PIs represent complementary methodological and biological expertises.  

Bente Vestergaard

Bente Vestergaard (personal homepage, ORC-ID: 0000-0001-8011-6414) is the leader of the initiative and is a world-leading expert in SAXS-based structural characterisation of fibrillating solutions and she has pioneered much development in this field, both on sample handling and data analysis. She has, with Arleth, spearheaded the use of microfluidic sample environments for SAXS and has continued this development with in situ dialysis and concentration devices. She has significant experience with recombinant expression, including recombinant deuteration. 

Gregers Andersen

Gregers Rom Andersen (personal homepage, ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6292-3319) has a comprehensive platform for preparation of the complement proteins and proteins in general. He has a long record of reconstituting challenging large macromolecular complexes for structure determination with X-ray crystallography and small angle scattering. He is an expert in XRD, and he will implement synchrotron serial crystallography in BRAINSTRUC. 

Kresten Lindorff-Larsen
(Photo Credit: Thomas Petri)

Kresten Lindorff-Larsen (Homepage, Google scholar profile) is a Professor at the Structural Biology & NMR Laboratory and the Linderstrøm-Lang Centre for Protein Science at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen. His research involves using molecular simulations to study the structure, dynamics and folding of proteins, with a particular focus on approaches to integrate experimental data with computer simulations. This includes methods for determining structures of dynamic molecules including intrinsically disordered proteins, and in turn using such models to study the biological functions of proteins and the relationships to disease. Within BRAINSTRUC, Lindorff-Larsen will build on this expertise, and will extend such methods to larger and more complex biomolecules and their assemblies, and to integrate a wider range of experimental methods. These methodological developments will be performed in the context of the specific biological problems studied in BRAINSTRUC, so that method development and applications will be integrated 

Lise Arleth

Lise Arleth (personal homepage, ORCID ID: 0000-0002-4694-4299) is an expert in SAXS/SANS experiments and method development including applications to biomolecular structures. This includes instrumentation , experiment design and advanced data analysis . She has pioneered the use of nanodiscs for solution based SAXS/SANS studies of membrane protein systems  including the use of advanced deuteration strategies for contrast variation neutron scattering . With Vestergaard, she has pioneered microfluidics-based sample devices for SAXS studies of proteins in solution. Based on this, she presently develops microfluidics based devices for time-resolved investigations in the millisecond to second range. 

Poul Nissen

Poul Nissen (personal homepage, ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0948-6628) and his lab are work on membrane protein XRD/MX and has determined more than 45 membrane protein structures. The lab also has experience with cryoEM and SAXS studies from nearly 20 years of collaborations, and has hands-on experience with XFEL studies. The Nissen lab is currently spearheading the establishment of cryoEM and CryoET facilities centered on the Titan-Krios microscope at AU. Being part of DANDRITE of the Nordic-EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine, the Nissen lab is also connected to a highly advance neuroscience community and has access to world-leading research infrastructures and expertise in the Nordic countries and EMBL for e.g. neuronal cell biology, stem cells, and imaging along with several in-house techniques in cell biology, biochemistry and biophysics.