COLLABORATORS
Our lab has a strongly collaborative spirit and we are engaged in many collaborations at the University of Zurich, in Switzerland and across the globe.
Enrica is our trusted expert of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and we have a shared interested in investigating membrane transporters using structural and biophysical approaches. Our collaboration started more than a decade ago, when Enrica was senior postdoc in the lab of Gunnar Jeschke at the ETH Zurich, and continued as Enrica became professor first at the FU Berlin and currently at the RUB. Constituting an Italian-Swiss dream team, we jointly investigated the ABC exporter TM287/288 and currently use nanobodies and sybodies as spin-labelled probes to interrogate the conformational cycle of ABC transporters in native membranes and in cells.
Joint Papers
Hubert Hilbi
Institute of Medical Microbiology, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Hubert is the master of Legionella pneumophila, the pathogen causing Legionnaires’ disease. His lab’s interest is to understand the pathogenicity of this unusual intracellular bacterium, which secrets an astonishing number of around 300 effector proteins to outsmart the infected cell. His most famous quote is: “how to kill one bird with many stones”. Over the past six years, we have collaborated on the structural elucidation of effector proteins (foremost RidL) and teamed up to study mycobacterial siderophores. The Hilbi lab supports us when it comes to fluorescence microscopy. Provided the large number of Legionella effectors, there is still loads to do in the years to come!
Joint Papers
2020 Mol Microbiol.
The structure of the Legionella response regulator LqsR reveals amino acids critical for phosphorylation and dimerization
Authors: Hochstrasser R, Hutter CAJ, Arnold FM, Bärlocher K, Seeger MA, Hilbi H.
2020 Cell Microbiol.
Mycobacterium marinum produces distinct mycobactin and carboxymycobactin siderophores to promote growth in broth and phagocytes
Authors: Knobloch P, Koliwer-Brandl H, Arnold FM, Hanna N, Gonda I, Adenau S, Personnic N, Barisch C, Seeger MA, Soldati T, Hilbi H.
With Eric we share our enthusiasm for membrane transporters, protein engineering and technological innovations. Our collaboration started back in 2009 when Markus and Eric both were working at the Institute of Biochemistry, University of Zurich. The seegerlab was an early adopter of Eric’s glorious FX cloning technology and we jointly came up with the idea to develop synthetic nanobodies libraries to trap membrane transporters in specific conformations. In a patriotic act, we initially called these synthetic nanobodies Swissbodies, and only later they became what they are now known for: sybodies!
Joint Papers
2020 Nat Protoc, 15(5): p. 1707-1741
Generation of synthetic nanobodies against delicate proteins
Authors: I. Zimmermann, P. Egloff, C.A.J. Hutter, B.T. Kuhn, P. Bräuer, S. Newstead, R.J.P. Dawson, E.R. Geertsma*, and M.A. Seeger*
2018 Elife, 7.
Synthetic single domain antibodies for the conformational trapping of membrane proteins
Authors: I. Zimmermann#, P. Egloff#, C.A. Hutter, F.M. Arnold, P. Stohler, N. Bocquet, M.N. Hug, S. Huber, M. Siegrist, L. Hetemann, J. Gera, S. Gmur, P. Spies, D. Gygax, E.R. Geertsma*, R.J. Dawson*, and M.A. Seeger*
2015 Biochemistry.
A Transporter Motor Taken Apart: Flexibility in the Nucleotide Binding Domains of a Heterodimeric ABC Exporter
Authors: Bukowska MA, Hohl M, Geertsma ER, Hürlimann LM, Grütter MG, Seeger MA.
2015 J Mol Biol.
Bicistronic mRNAs to enhance membrane protein overexpression
Authors: Marino J, Hohl M, Seeger MA, Zerbe O, Geertsma ER.
With Simon we share the fascination for membrane transporter structure and function and he is a master of lipidic cubic phase crystallography. In summer 2017, we engaged in a collaboration to generate sybodies against the KDEL receptor and in record time, the project yielded a beautiful structure published in March 2019. In late 2019, we received a Wellcome collaborative award together with Francis Barr and Phil Biggin (both at University of Oxford) to study receptor mediated trafficking within the early secretory at the structural and cell biology level using sybodies and NestLink.
Joint Papers
2020 Nat Protoc, 15(5): p. 1707-1741
Generation of synthetic nanobodies against delicate proteins
Authors: I. Zimmermann, P. Egloff, C.A.J. Hutter, B.T. Kuhn, P. Bräuer, S. Newstead, R.J.P. Dawson, E.R. Geertsma*, and M.A. Seeger*
2019 Science, 363(6431): p. 1103-1107
Structural basis for pH-dependent retrieval of ER proteins from the Golgi by the KDEL receptor
Authors: P. Bräuer, J.L. Parker, A. Gerondopoulos, I. Zimmermann, M.A. Seeger, F.A. Barr, and S. Newstead
Sebastian knows the ins and outs of outer membrane proteins and is the master of BamA. With a joint SNF BRIDGE Discovery grant, we have established strong ties to shed light on the mysteries of BamA structure/function using nanobodies and sybodies. We aim to develop novel bioantibiotics targeting BamA of problematic ESKAPE pathogens.
Joint Papers
2019 J Biomol NMR.
Identification of conformation-selective nanobodies against the membrane protein insertase BamA by an integrated structural biology approach
Authors: Kaur H, Hartmann JB, Jakob RP, Zahn M, Zimmermann I, Maier T, Seeger MA, Hiller S.
Peter Sander
Institute of Medical Microbiology, University of Zurich
With Peter, we collaborate on mycobacteria-related projects, in particular investigating resistance and pathogenicity mechanisms of Mycobacterium abscessus.
Joint Papers
2019 Mol Microbiol
Increased drug permeability of a stiffened mycobacterial outer membrane in cells lacking MFS transporter Rv1410 and lipoprotein LprG
Authors: M. Hohl#, S. Remm#, H.A. Eskandarian, M. Dal Molin, F.M. Arnold, L.M. Hürlimann, A. Krügel, G.E. Fantner, P. Sander, and M.A. Seeger*
Philippe Plattet
Division of Eperimental Clinical Research, University of Berne
During the Corona year of 2020, we engaged in a collaboration with Phil to rapidly generate sybodies against SARS-CoV-2. Phil brings in the virology expertise into this fruitful collaboration and together with the lab of Dimitrios Fotiadis, we received funding from the SNSF NRP78 program “Covid-19”.
Joint Papers
2022 EMBO reports, 23(4):e54199
Biparatopic sybodies neutralize SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and mitigate drug resistance
Authors: J.D. Walter#, M. Scherer#, C.A.J. Hutter#, A.A. Garaeva#, I. Zimmermann, M. Wyss, J. Rheinberger, Y. Ruedin, J.C. Earp, P. Egloff, M. Sorgenfrei, L.M. Hürlimann, I. Gonda, G. Meier, S. Remm, S. Thavarasah, G. van Geest, R. Bruggmann, G. Zimmer, D.J. Slotboom, C. Paulino*, P. Plattet*, M.A. Seeger*
Peter Keller
Peter Keller is our innovative diagnostics expert with whom we collaborate in our SNSF NRP 72 project aiming at the generation of nanobodies for rapid diagnostics of blood stream infections caused by gram-negative ESKAPE pathogens.