Cell scientists to watch – Zdeněk Lánský and Marcus Braun

Abstract

ABSTRACT Zdeněk Lánský received his PhD in physics from the Charles University in Prague in 2006. He then moved to The Netherlands for his postdoc, where he studied the biophysics of molecular motors – first at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam with Erwin Peterman, and then at Wageningen University with Marcel Janson. In 2011 he joined the lab of Stefan Diez at the B CUBE Center for Molecular Bioengineering in Dresden, where his research focused on crosslinker-mediated force generation in the cytoskeleton. Zdeněk set up his lab at the Institute of Biotechnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, BIOCEV in 2015, which he has run together with Marcus Braun since 2017. Marcus Braun received his PhD in biochemistry from King's College London in 2009 for his work on microtubule-based molecular motors in the labs of Andrew McAinsh and Rob Cross. He then moved to Dresden for his postdoc to study cytoskeletal transport, with a particular focus on microtubule crosslinkers, in Stefan Diez's lab – first at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, then later at B CUBE. In 2017, he joined Zdeněk Lánský at the Institute of Biotechnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, BIOCEV, as a principal investigator. The Lánský and Braun lab investigates ensemble dynamics of cytoskeletal proteins.