| Position | Assistant professor |
| Research fields | Autophagy, aggrephagy, autophagosome, virus, neurodegenerative diseases |
Role:
Senior postdoctoral researcher, Molecular cell biologist.
Research group:
Prof. Harrie Kampinga group, Department of Biomedical Sciences of Cells and Systems (BSCS), UMCG, Groningen, The Netherlands
Expertise:
Autophagy, aggrephagy, autophagosome, virus, neurodegenerative diseases
Education/Training:
2003 – 2008 Study of Biology (major subjects: cell biology, genetics, virology) at the University of Tuebingen (Germany) and the University of Queensland, Brisbane (Australia).
2008 – 2013 PhD thesis in the laboratory of Prof. Tassula Proikas-Cezanne, Interfaculty Institute for Cell Biology, Department of Cell Biology, University of Tuebingen (Germany).
Positions and Employment:
2013- 2014 Postdoctoral fellow, UMC Utrecht, Utrecht University (The Netherlands)
2015- 2017 Postdoctoral fellow, UMC Groningen, Groningen University (The Netherlands)
2017- now Senior postdoctoral position, Department of Biomedical Sciences of Cells and Systems), UMC Groningen, Groningen University (The Netherlands)
Engagement:
2018 Newsletter on NBIAdisorders
2019 Patient’s Day for rare movement disorders (NBIA section), Groningen, The Netherlands
2019 NBIA Disorders Association Family Conference, Charleston, USA (video)
2019 University of Groningen/UMCG and Universidad de Chile (UCH) matchmaking event
Collaborations with the private sector:
Promega, Madison, WI. Product launching and manuscript in preparation
Okklo Life Sciences, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Product testing
Scientific career:
Since the start of his research career, Mario Mauthe was focusing on understanding the cellular degradation and recycling pathway of autophagy. First, he studied in great detail the involvement of the WIPI protein family members in autophagy, looking in particular at their role in signaling, bacterial defense and metabolism. He conducted this research in the laboratory of Prof. Tassula Proikas-Cezanne, the main scientist that identified and characterized the function of WIPI proteins in autophagy.
When he first started joined the laboratory of Prof. Fulvio Reggiori to do his postdoctoral research, he broadened his expertise on autophagy and focused on the identification and studying of functions of autophagy-related (ATG) proteins outside the context of autophagy. These studies were mainly conducted in the frame of viral infections and led to the identification of novel, autophagy-independent functions of two central ATG proteins, i.e., ATG13 and FIP200.
As a more independent senior postdoctoral scientist, he is now specializing himself on the relevance of autophagy in neurodegenerative diseases. A hallmark of numerous neurodegenerative disorders is the accumulation of neurotoxic protein aggregates. To study at the molecular level how autophagy, and more specifically a selective type of autophagy called aggrephagy, contributes to the clearance of these aggregates, he is employing a novel cellular system that was recently developed in his host laboratory. Furthermore, and based on his expertise on WIPI proteins, he began investigating WDR45/WIPI4 and its contribution to BPAN pathophysiology, supported by small but crucial grants provided by the NBIA patient organization (NBIADA) and the Dutch NBIA patient association.
He is a member of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM), the Nordic Autophagy Society (NAS) and of the Expertise Center Movement Disorders Groningen and a review editor for the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.
Contact details:
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