From small molecules to complex organelles

Latest News

November 19, 2024 ASAP: More funding for Parkinson’s research for the Martens lab The Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s Initiative (ASAP) fosters collaborative research to accelerate Parkinson’s disease discoveries. Since 2020, the Martens lab (Max Perutz Labs) has been part of the ASAP-funded Team Hurley, also known as the ‘mito911’ team. ASAP has extended the mito911 team grant by two years. Read more →
November 14, 2024 Postdoc position in the Clausen lab (IMP) – Age-related protein disorders The Allen Frontiers Group funds a postdoctoral position in the Clausen lab at the IMP to study the impact of disease mutations on protein lifespan. Read more →
October 25, 2024 Time for lunch During a process called aggrephagy, aggregated proteins are marked with ubiquitin and clustered into molecular condensates, which are then degraded with the help of the autophagic machinery. Now published in EMBO Journal, the Martens group from Max Perutz Labs reveals how the cargo receptor protein TAX1BP1 facilitates the switch from cargo collection to autophagosome formation. Read more →

About the Program

Targeted Protein Degradation: From small molecules to complex organelles

Our Special Research Program is a collaborative research platform to unravel how proteins are targeted for degradation. We focus on the two major cellular proteolytic pathways, the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) and autophagy, and the crosstalk between them in the cytoplasm and in the nucleus. Furthermore, we investigate how small molecules can be used to chemically reprogram the degradation systems, enabling the targeted proteolysis of selected proteins in a spatially and temporally controlled manner …

Selected Publications

2024 Tau fibrils evade autophagy by excessive p62 coating and TAX1BP1 exclusion Science Advances Ferrari L, Bauer B, Qiu Y, Schuschnig M, Klotz S, Anrather D, Juretschke T, Beli P, Gelpi E, Martens S Go to publication →
2024 Large-scale chemoproteomics expedites ligand discovery and predicts ligand behavior in cells Science Offensperger F, Tin G, Duran-Frigola M, Hahn E, Dobner S, Ende CWA, Strohbach JW, Rukavina A, Brennsteiner V, Ogilvie K, Marella N, Kladnik K, Ciuffa R, Majmudar JD, Field SD, Bensimon A, Ferrari L, Ferrada E, Ng A, Zhang Z, Degliesposti G, Boeszoermenyi A, Martens S, Stanton R, Müller AC, Hannich JT, Hepworth D, Superti-Furga G, Kubicek S, Schenone M, Winter GE Go to publication →
2023 Structural basis of how the BIRC6/SMAC complex regulates apoptosis and autophagy Science Ehrmann JF, Grabarczyk DB, Heinke M, Deszcz L, Kurzbauer R, Hudecz O, Shulkina A, Gogova R, Meinhart A, Versteeg GA, Clausen T Go to publication →

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