Most cells in the human body are in intimate contact with extracellular matrix, the glycoprotein network that acts both as a scaffold and as a regulator of cell behaviour. Basement membranes, a component of the extracellular matrix, are essential for the formation and stability of cell sheets, muscle and peripheral nerves. Defective basement membranes can result in severe muscular dystrophies and skin-blistering diseases in humans.
Professor Hohenester’s laboratory is researching laminin, the large glycoprotein that forms a polymer in basement membranes, and collagen, the major structural protein of vertebrates. They have used X‑ray crystallography to show how laminin polymerises and how cells adhere to extracellular matrix.
Biography
Erhard Hohenester trained as a chemist in his native Austria and obtained a PhD in Biophysics at the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Birkbeck College in London from 1996 to 1998. During this time he began a productive collaboration with the late Rupert Timpl, which culminated in the first structures of the laminin G domain. In 1998 Erhard moved to Imperial College London and was awarded a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in Basic Biomedical Science, which he still holds. He was promoted to the position of Professor of Structural Matrix Biology in 2009.
Professor Hohenester’s research is being funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.