Dr René Frank

Profile

Background: 2013-2018 Postdoctoral scientist, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge; 2011-2013 Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Edinburgh; 2008-2011 Junior Research Fellow, Emmanuel College, Cambridge and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute; 2006-2008 Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellow at Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute; 2004-2006 Postdoctoral Scientist, Dept Biochemistry, University of Cambridge; 2000-2005, PhD in Structural Biology of Multienzyme complexes, Dept Biochemistry, University of Cambridge; 1997-2000; B.Sc. Biochemistry, Imperial College, London.

Responsibilities

• Head of Neuroscience
• ARUK Yorkshire Network Committee Member

Research interests

How physiological and pathological mechanisms operate at source in animal model and human brains is unclear. This is challenging because of the brain’s inaccessibility, fragility, as well as its scale and complexity. To open a window into this problem we are developing and applying methods to navigate across anatomical, cellular and molecular length-scales in brain tissue, in which we determine molecular structure. In-tissue structural biology gives us atomic models at source but also powerful contextual information so that we can understand what, where, when and how healthy and disease-causing structures effect surrounding molecular complexes, organelles and the cells within which they arise.

Group Members

Nayab Fatima (Postdoctoral Research Fellow)

Joshua Jenkins (Postdoctoral Research Fellow)

Maddie Gilbert (Postdoctoral Research Fellow)

Will Thompson (PhD student)

Tom Mitchell (PhD student)

Patryk Wasniewski (co-supervisor, PhD student)

Shreya Choudhuri (co-supervisor, PhD student)

Affiliations at Leeds

Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology

Neur@L

Primary investigator (PI)

• High-resolution, in situ structures of the blood-brain barrier and neurovascular disease
• In situ architecture of Alzheimer's disease-associated pathology

Research groups and institutes

• Neuroscience and Behaviour
• Structural Biology
• Heredity, Development and Disease

Current postgraduate researchers

• Thomas Mitchell