Oskar Staufer

Max Planck Institute for Medical Research | MPIMF · Department of Cellular Biophysics

Development of regulated cellular processes and signaling methods in synthetic cells is essential for their integration with living materials. Light is an attractive tool to achieve this, but the limited penetration depth into tissue of visible light restricts its usability for in-vivo applications. Here, we describe the design and implementation o...

Immune vigilance ensures body integrity by eliminating malignant cells through the complex but coordinated cooperation of highly diversified lymphocytes populations. The sheer complexity of the immune system has slowed development of immunotherapies based on top-down genetic engineering of lymphocytes. In contrast, bottom-up assembly of synthetic c...

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are fundamental for proper physiological functioning of multicellular organisms. By shuttling nucleic acids and proteins between cells, EVs regulate a plethora of cellular processes, especially those involved in immune signalling. However, the mechanistic understanding concerning the biophysical principles underlying EV...

SARS-CoV-2 infection is a major global public health concern with incompletely understood pathogenesis. The SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) glycoprotein comprises a highly conserved free fatty acid binding pocket (FABP) with unknown function and evolutionary selection advantage1,2. Deciphering FABP impact on COVID-19 progression is challenged by the heterogen...

As the global burden of SARS-CoV-2 infections escalates, so does the evolution of viral variants with increased transmissibility and pathology. In addition to this entrenched diversity, RNA viruses can also display genetic diversity within single infected hosts with co-existing viral variants evolving differently in distinct cell types. The BriSΔ v...

Employing concepts from physics, chemistry and bioengineering, 'learning-by-building' approaches are becoming increasingly popular in the life sciences, especially with researchers who are attempting to engineer cellular life from scratch. The SynCell2020/21 conference brought together researchers from different disciplines to highlight progress in...

Empowered by emerging concepts from physics, chemistry, and bioengineering, learning-by-building approaches have found increasing application in the life sciences. Particularly, they are directed to tackle the overarching goal of engineering cellular life from scratch. The SynCell2020/21 conference brought together a diverse group of researchers to...

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are fundamental for intercellular communication and influence nearly every process in cell physiology. However, because of their intricate molecular complexity, quantitative knowledge on their signaling mechanisms is missing, particularly impeding their therapeutic application. We used a complementary and quantitative e...

Development of regulated cellular processes and signaling methods in synthetic cells is essential for their integration with living materials. Light is an attractive tool to achieve this, but the limited penetration depth into tissue of visible light restricts its usability for in-vivo applications. Here, we describe the synthesis and application o...

As the global burden of SARS-CoV-2 infections escalates, so does the evolution of viral variants which is of particular concern due to their potential for increased transmissibility and pathology. In addition to this entrenched variant diversity in circulation, RNA viruses can also display genetic diversity within single infected hosts with co-exis...

COVID-19, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), represents a global crisis. Key to SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic development is unraveling the mechanisms driving high infectivity, broad tissue tropism and severe pathology. Our 2.85 Å cryo-EM structure of SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) glycoprotein reveals that the receptor binding...

Lipid-based vesicles have found widespread applications in the life sciences, allowing for fundamental insights into membrane-based processes in cell biology and as carrier systems for drug delivery purposes. So far, mostly small unilamellar vesicles (SUVs) with diameters of ~100 nm have been applied as carrier systems for biomedical applications....

Creating a magic bullet that can selectively kill cancer cells while sparing nearby healthy cells remains one of the most ambitious objectives in pharmacology. Nanomedicine, which relies on the use of nanotechnologies to fight disease, was envisaged to fulfill this coveted goal. Despite substantial progress, the structural complexity of therapeutic...

This study reports on the development of vertical, partially encapsulated nanoelectrodes for electrically contacting the interior of electrogenic cells with microelectronics. Intracellular electrical stimulation and recording with single cell resolution enables new insights into the electrophysiology of cells embedded in a complex multicellular net...

COVID-19, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), represents a global crisis. Key to SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic development is unraveling the mechanisms driving high infectivity, broad tissue tropism and severe pathology. Our cryo-EM structure of SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) glycoprotein reveals that the receptor binding domains...

Exposure to live bacteria and accumulation of dead bacteria during bactericidal processes can cause bacterial infectious diseases, implant failure, and antibacterial surface deterioration. Microcapsules with asymmetrically distributed, funnel‐shaped pores, which are capable of capturing, retaining, and killing bacteria are developed, offering a sol...

Bottom-up synthetic biology has directed most efforts toward the construction of artificial compartmentalized systems that recreate living cell functions in their mechanical, morphological, or metabolic characteristics. However, bottom-up synthetic biology also offers great potential to study subcellular structures like organelles. Because of their...

Here, we introduce a one-pot method for the bottom-up assembly of complex single- and multi-compartment synthetic cells. Cellular components are enclosed by giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs), produced - at milliliter scale - directly from small unilamellar vesicles (SUVs) or proteoliposomes with only basic laboratory equipment within minutes. Towar...

Coordinated collective electrochemical signals in multicellular assemblies, such as ion fluxes, membrane potentials, electrical gradients and steady electric fields, play an important role in cell and tissue spatial organization during many physiological processes like wound healing, inflammatory responses and hormone release. This mass of electric...

Cell biology considers most animal tissues as assemblies of "individual" cells that rely on different contact-dependent communication mechanisms, including synapses, gap junctions or - a recent awareness - membrane nano- and microtubes. However, by protease-mediated singularization of dense 2D/ 3D cell cultures and tissue explants, we show here tha...

Increased pro-inflammatory signaling is a hallmark of metabolic dysfunction in obesity and diabetes. Although both inflammatory and energy substrate handling processes represent critical layers of metabolic control, their molecular integration sites remain largely unknown. Here, we identify the heterodimerization interface between the α and β subun...

The functional fusion of "living" biomaterial (such as cells) with synthetic systems has developed into a principal ambition for various scientific disciplines. In particular, emerging fields such as bionics and nanomedicine integrate advanced nanomaterials with biomolecules, cells and organisms in order to develop novel strategies for applications...

Man kann keine wissenschaftliche Arbeit veröffentlichen, wenn man seine Messungen nicht korrekt darstellt oder durchgeführte Studien falsch auswertet. Als erfolgreicher Wissenschaftler sollte man mit beiden Beinen fest auf stati(sti)schem Boden stehen.

Dieses Kapitel soll die wesentlichen Grundlagen linearer Gleichungssysteme erklären. Lineare Gleichungen sind von besonders einfacher Struktur und deswegen leicht zu handhaben. Außerdem sind sie für praktische Belange unerlässlich. Komplizierte Systeme können oft durch eine Reduktion auf lineare Probleme effizient gelöst werden. Bei dem Versuch, al...

Wir haben bereits in Kap. 1 gesehen, dass Funktionen eine wichtige Rolle bei der Beschreibung biologischer Prozesse spielen. Die Exponentialfunktion ist z. B. geeignet, das Wachstum von Escherichia coli zu beschreiben. Die Gompertz-Funktion charakterisiert die Expansion eines Tumors. Ebenso gibt es Funktionen für die Veränderung der Konzentrationen...

Die schließende Statistik wird benötigt, um von vereinzelten Messwerten (Stichproben) auf das große Ganze (die Grundgesamtheit) zu schließen.

Will man Messungen miteinander in Beziehung setzen, bieten sich Funktionen an. Mit ihnen kann man beispielsweise Proportionen oder Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse zwischen Ergebnissen darstellen. Wir werden zunächst erklären, was Funktionen sind und wie man mit ihnen umgeht. Dann werden wir uns ein paar klassische Bausteine in Form von mathematisch relev...

Wie wahrscheinlich ist es, dass ich Mathe jemals wieder brauche? “, fragt sich Dr. Arnold, der Otto Normalbiologe.