People

Dr. Bettina Böttcher

Location: Swann 334

Telephone: 0131 6505699

Email: bettina.boettcher@ed.ac.uk

Web-Site: http://boettcher.bio.ed.ac.uk

C.V.

Year	Description
2008 to present	Darwin-Trust Senior Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh
2002	Habilitation in Physical Chemistry, University of Freiburg
1999-2008	Group leader at the EMBL-Heidelberg
1996-1999	Junior group leader (C1) at the University of Freiburg
1992-1996	PostDoc at the LMB-MRC, Cambridge
1991	PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in Biology, University Stuttgart
1989-1991	PhD-student at the University Stuttgart; the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and the Fritz-Haber Institut Berlin
1988	Diploma in Chemistry, TU-Berlin
1988	Diploma-Student at the TU-Berlin

Teaching

Biochemical Techniques

Research interests

The mechanistic aspects of large complexes are poorly understood, because the structural plasticity of only very few complexes has been studied in detail. Therefore, the portfolio of possible motions in complexes and how they are realized is still elusive. I want to understand these principles by investigating the structure of a whole collection of complexes in different functional states. As method of choice I use electron cryo microscopy, which allows me to study the conformations of the complexes under a wide range of conditions in an aqueous solution. This is followed by single particle image processing for determining the conformational plasticity of the complexes in response to different environmental cues. The structural studies are combined with biophysical measurements to gain a comprehensive understanding of how these molecular machines work. The current focus is on RNA-processing complexes, ATPases working with a rotational mechanism and viral capsids during maturation.

Representative publications

B. Gerlach, J. A. Kleinschmidt and B. Böttcher. Conformational Changes in Adeno-Associated Virus Type 1 Induced by Genome Packaging. J Mol Biol (2011) 409 427-438.

C. Fernandez-Tornero*, B. Böttcher*#, U. J. Rashid, U. Steuerwald, B. Florchinger, D. P. Devos, D. Lindner and C. W. Müller#. Conformational flexibility of RNA polymerase III during transcriptional elongation. EMBO J (2010) 29 3762-72. *contributed equally; # joint corresponding;

C. Ulbrich, M. Diepholz, J. Bassler, D. Kressler, B. Pertschy, K. Galani, B. Böttcher# and E. Hurt#. Mechanochemical removal of ribosome biogenesis factors from nascent 60S ribosomal subunits. Cell (2009) 138 911-22. # joint corresponding;

M. Diepholz, D. Venzke, S. Prinz, C. Batisse, B. Flörchinger, M. Rossle, D. I. Svergun, B. Böttcher# and J. Fethiere#. A different conformation for EGC stator subcomplex in solution and in the assembled yeast V-ATPase: possible implications for regulatory disassembly. Structure (2008) 16 1789-98. # joint corresponding;

S. Seitz, S. Urban, C. Antoni and B. Böttcher. Cryo-electron microscopy of hepatitis B virions reveals variability in envelope capsid interactions. EMBO J (2007) 26 4160-7.

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This article was published on Feb 8, 2012