Fasshauer Dirk

Biography

Dirk Fasshauer is a neuroscretion specialist and has been appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Morphology of UNIL as of 1 March 2010. Born in 1965 and of German nationality, Dirk Fasshauer began his academic career by studying biology at the University of Göttingen. He joined the Department of Clinical Biochemistry to carry out his diploma and thesis work, which he obtained in 1994. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Yale University (CT, USA) laboratory of Prof. Reinhard Jahn, he was recruited by the latter in 1997 when the Department of Neurobiology was set up at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. He founded his own research group in structural biochemistry in 2002, until his appointment as associate professor at UNIL in March 2010.

Research Interest

Reserch interests; The mechanism by which eukaryotic cells transport material between intracellular organelles is of fundamental importance in cell biology. Transport is mediated by vesicles that bud from a donor organelle and afterwards fuse with a target organelle. Currently, it is becoming clear that the underlying molecular machineries involved in the principal aspects of vesicular trafficking are highly conserved among all eukaryotes. Key players during the final step in vesicle trafficking, the fusion of a vesicle with its acceptor membrane, are the so-called SNARE proteins. SNARE proteins are thought to assemble into a tight complex between the fusing membranes, pulling them together (the ‘zipper’ model). To come to a better understanding of the molecular events during vesicular fusion, we focus on a detailed structural, kinetic, thermodynamic, and phylogenetic characterization of the underlying protein-protein interactions. In particular, we want to investigate how SNARE assembly takes place, how this process is controlled and catalyzed by other factors. Next to standard biochemical techniques, we employ spectroscopic (Circular Dichroism and Fluorescence Spectroscopy) and calorimetric (Isothermal Titration Calorimetry) methods.