Abstract:

Prof. Veigel tries to understand the molecular mechanisms coordinating membrane shaping by motor protein-lipid interaction, which is critical for functioning of living cells. In the first part, Prof. Veigel will show that self-organising protein-lipid domains of the motor protein myosin-VI (MYO6) and cargo lipid induce tube reshaping and scission without catalytic activity of MYO6. In the second part, she will describe single-molecule optical tweezers studies highlighting that a single MYO6 phosphorylation event can control nucleotide-exchange as well as the velocities and forces for translocating actin filaments.

Biography:

Claudia Veigel trained and qualified as a doctor of medicine at the Universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg, Germany. For her MD/PhD in Physiology (1990) she studied the effects of fatty acid metabolism on the molecular mechanisms of muscle contraction.

In 1995 she joined the lab of Professor David White and Dr. Justin Molloy at the Biology Department, University of York UK, who had developed optical tweezers to measure force and movement produced by a single myosin motor molecule. Supported by his Royal Society University Research Fellowship Justin Molloy started his own lab, which Claudia Veigel joined to develop together single molecule mechanical methods and to study the details of myosin motors proceeding through the chemo-mechanical cycle. In 1999 she obtained a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to start her own lab, further developing single molecule technology using optical tweezers at the Biology Department, York.

In 2002 Justin Molloy and Claudia Veigel both moved to the MRC National Institute of Medical Research, Justin as Head of Division and Claudia as a group leader. Her research team uses single molecule techniques, including optical tweezers, atomic force, TIRF and electron microscopy, to study the basic mechanisms of myosin motor proteins in vitro. In 2010, Claudia was appointed Professor and chair at the Department of Cellular Physiology and Centre of Nanosciences (CeNS) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany..

Please find attached her CV for more information!