Research profile Prof. Dr. Roland Brandt

The research of the Brandt group focuses on the study of the development and degeneration of nerve cells on the molecular, cellular and systemic level. A large part of the working group is concerned with the mechanisms that underlie the course of Alzheimer's disease. A protein of the neuronal cytoskeleton, the tau protein, plays a key role in this, and we investigate its (mal) functions using "live cell imaging" methods in cell and tissue models.

Research topics

• Molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease
• The cytoskeleton in the development and aging of nerve cells
• Molecular mechanisms of cell stress

Model systems

• Neural cell cultures
• Organotypic brain slices
• Transgenic mouse models

Methods

• Cell and tissue cultures
• Viral and non-viral gene transfer
• "Live cell imaging" and algorithm-based image analysis
• Extracellular recordings with a multi-electrode array

Selected publications

• Hrynchak MV, Rierola M, Golovyashkina N, Penazzi L, Pump WC, David B, Sündermann F, Brandt R, Bakota L (2020):  Chronic presence of oligomeric Aβ differentially modulates spine parameters in the hippocampus and cortex of mice with low APP transgene expression. Front Synaptic Neurosci 12.
• Niewidok B*, Igaev M*, Pereira da Graca A, Strassner A, Lenzen C, Richter CP, Piehler J, Kurre R, Brandt R (2018):  Single-molecule imaging reveals dynamic biphasic partition of RNA-binding proteins in stress granules. J Cell Biol 217 (*joint first authors).
• Gauthier-Kemper A*, Suárez Alonso M*, Sündermann F, Niewidok B, Fernandez MP, Bakota L, Heinisch JJ, Brandt R (2018):  Annexins A2 and A6 interact with the extreme N-terminus of tau and thereby contribute to tau’s axonal localization. J Biol Chem 293 (*joint first authors).