Ueli Aebi

Ueli Aebi ( born May 31, 1946 in Bern ) is a Swiss structural biologist and co-founder of the Maurice E. Müller Institute for Structural Biology at the Biozentrum, University of Basel.

Life

Ueli Aebi studied from 1967 to 1974 physics, mathematics and molecular biology at the University of Bern and the University of Basel; he received his doctorate in 1977 in biophysics at the Biozentrum, University of Basel. After building his academic career in the United States ( University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore ), he returned in 1986 as Professor of Structural Biology Biozentrum to the back. He is co-founder of the Maurice E. Müller Institute for Structural Biology and from 1986 until his retirement in 2011, its director.

Work

Ueli Aebi is considered one of the pioneers of integrative structural biology and the mechano -and nano- biology. He dealt with the elucidation of the structure, function and assembly of the cytoskeleton, the nuclear pore complexes (NPCs ) and of amyloid fibrils as observed in Alzheimer 's disease. He studied the architecture of various supramolecular structures via a combination of light, electron and atomic force microscopy, X-ray crystallography and protein engineering. The spatial structure of the NPC certain Aebi using cryo - electron tomography and image reconstruction methods. His work opened the door to nanomedicine and led to the development of novel nano- tools for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of tissue diseases.

Awards

Publications (selection )

• U. Aebi, J. Cohn, E.L. Buhle, L. Gerace: The Nuclear Lamina Is a meshwork of intermediate -type filament. In Nature (London), 323, 1986, pp. 560-564, PMID 3762708
• R. Reichelt, A. Wood Castle, E.L. Buhle, Jr., M. Jarnik, A. Engel, U. Aebi: Correlation Between Structure and Mass Distribution of the Nuclear Pore Complex, and of distinct pore complex components. In J. Cell Biol, 1990, 110, pp. 883-894, PMID 2,324,201th
• C. S. Goldsbury, J. Kistler, U. Aebi, T. Arvinte, GJS Cooper: Watching amyloid fibrils grow by Atomic Force Microscopy. In J. Mol Biol, 1999, 285, pp. 33-39, PMID 9878384
• R.Y.M. Lim, B. Fahrenkrog, J. Koeser, K. Schwarz - Herion, J. Deng, U. Aebi: Nanomechanical Basis of Selective Gating by the Nuclear Pore Complex. In: Science, 2007, 318, pp. 640-643, PMID 17916694
• M. Plodinec, M. Loparic, E. C. Obermann, R. Zanetti - Dallenbach, P. Oertle, J. T. Hyotyla, U. Aebi, M. Bentires -Ali, R.Y.H. Lim, C.-A. Schoenberger: The Nano Mechanical Signature of Breast Cancer. In Nature Nanotechnology, 2012, 7, pp. 757-765; also: Nature 491 (Nature Outlook 22 -Nov- 2012, S75- S83 ), PMID 23085644