M.Sc. Karoline-Luisa Lê Công
Crystals are a girl's best friend... as long as they diffract nicely. I studied biochemistry at the FU and felt in love with protein crystallography during my Bachelor thesis at Charité Berlin. Since than I've done several internships from Ludwigshafen BASF to Hamburg XFEL and wrote my Master thesis at FMP in a crystal-structure-based Drug Design project. Now I'm back at the FU to contribute my passion for protein crystallography to the Heberle Team as a doctoral student.
Currently I'm working under the UniSysCat framework on a method for growing light-gated functional protein crystal for time-resolved X-Ray measurements.
Department of Physics
Institute of Experimental Physics
Experimental Molecular Biophysics
PhD Candidate
Karoline-Luisa Lê Công born 1995 in Berlin, Germany
2013-2016 Bachelor of Science, Freie Universität Berlin.
2016-2020 Master of Science, Freie Universität Berlin.
My current research focuses on the crystallization of mechanosensitive channels, co-crystallized with lightsensitive azolipids for time-resolved structural investigations. The lateral tension-switch from azolipid isomerization by light signal serves as a tool for a light-controlled opening of these channels. Thereby E. coli MscL is used as model for MS gating mechanisms. In combination with spectroscopic methods, a detailed examination of the conformational changes of pressuresensitive channels is pursued. Such precise structural knowledge of the mechanosensitive channel opening mechanisms are relevant for pain management candidates - in early developmental phases. Moreover, azolipids could serve as a optogenetic molecular switch for activation of pressuresensitive channels.