Biosketch

As trained structural biologist (PhD in 2009, Free University of Berlin), Albert Guskov combines macromolecular X-ray crystallography, single particle cryo-EM, and modelling in his original investigations of membrane proteins and macromolecular complexes. The main lines of his research are:

• Structural and functional characterization of Solute Carrier family 1 of transporters;

• Bacterial metallohomeostasis;

• Protein translation apparatus in pathogenic fungi.

Albert's group has significantly contributed into mechanistic understanding of mechanisms of transmembrane transport (>20 peer-reviewed publications during past five years) via primary and secondary active transporters as well as channels.

Three top publications 2017-2022

1. Colucci E, Anshari ZR, Patino-Ruiz MF, Nemchinova M, Whittaker J, Slotboom DJ & Guskov A (2023) Mutation in glutamate transporter homologue GltTk provides insights into pathologic mechanism of episodic ataxia 6. Nature Communications 14: 1799; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37503-y

EA6 is an example of a neglected rare disease. In this contribution we investigated the structural basis of this pathological condition by combination of solid support membrane physiology and cryo-EM.

2. Zgadzay Y, Kolosova O, Stetsenko A, Wu C, Bruchlen D, Usachev K, Validov S, Jenner L, Rogachev A, Yusupova G, Sachs MS, Guskov A* & Yusupov M* (2022). E-site drug specificity of the human pathogen Candida albicans ribosome. Science Advances 8: eabn1062; DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn1062

In this work we reported the first structure of a ribosome from the highly pathogenic fungus Candida albicans. The obtained structure explained the inherent resistance of Candida albicans to cycloheximide.

3. Nemchinova M, Melcr J, Wassenaar TA, Marrink SJ, Guskov A. Asymmetric CorA gating mechanism as observed by molecular dynamics simulations. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling 61(5): 2407-2417; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.1c00261

This is the most detailed characterization of gating mechanism in CorA proteins using molecular dynamics simulations.