Peter Faller

Fellowship 2015

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Peter Faller is currently a Professor in Chemistry and group leader at the Institut de Chimie (UMR 7177) in Strasbourg. From 2003 to 2015 he was Professor in Chemistry at the University Paul Sabatier of Toulouse and a group leader at the Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination du CNRS. He was born in St. Gallen (CH) and grew up in Switzerland. He was trained as a teacher for elementary school (Kreuzlingen, CH) before starting his studies in Biochemistry at the University of Zürich (CH), where he obtained also his PhD in Biochemistry with M. Vasak on structure, reactivity and function of the zinc- and copper-thiolate cluster containing protein metallothionein. He was a Post-doc at the CEA Saclay (France) with A.W. Rutherford and in Freiburg (Germany) with A. Krieger-Liszkay working on proton-coupled electron transfer of tyrosines, redox reactions of carotenoids and metal cluster assembly in photosystem II. Ongoing research projects of the group are on the self-assembly of amyloidogenic peptides and their interaction with metal ions, other (metallo)-proteins and small molecules (aggregation inhibitors/fluorophores).

Peptides as biological shuttles for copper ions

USIAS Fellows : Peter Faller et Christelle Hureau
Post-doc: Paulina Gonzalez

Biological membranes play an absolute key role in life, as they form the border between inside and outside and hence control what enters and what leaves a cell. Cells need a tight control of the concentration of all chemicals (like proteins, metabolites, ions etc.). Loss of controls about the concentration of the entities can lead to disease and ultimately to death.

Copper is an essential metal ion and is important as a catalytic center is several processes including very fundamental ones like energy production. That's why loss of control over Cu is very dangerous and is well documented by two genetic diseases, called Wilson's and Menkes' diseases, one leading to an accumulation of Cu and the other one to a lack of Cu. Both diseases are lethal at young ages if not treated. Also in several neurodegenerative diseases, a Cu dyshomeostasis seems to be involved. In Alzheimer's disease, small molecules having a so called Cu-ionophore activity (able to transport Cu through membranes) showed promising results in therapeutic approaches.

The project consists of designing and investigating peptidic platforms to bind, transfer and deliver copper ions intra-cellularly. pH or redox changes are exploited as stimuli for intracellular Cu release. Peptides have been chosen for their high modularity and their multi-functional ability. The proposed approach is based on the coupling of a cell penetrating moiety and a copper binding sequence. The project aims to provide fundamental insights about this new type of copper transport, to obtain a new tool to probe the importance of copper homeostasis in biological processes and might be of interest for therapeutic applications.