2002 Laureate
Current position
Group leader, Professor
Host institution
ETH Zürich, Switzerland
allain@mol.biol.ethz.ch
Structure of the TDP43 (green) – RNA (yellow) complex, Lukavsky et al, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology (2013)
Alternative splicing is a process allowing cells to make different products from one gene. Since it was discovered over three decades ago now, it has been shown that it has key roles especially in tissue differentiation and pathologies like hereditary diseases and cancer.
Frédéric Allain is determining with his team the structure of protein/RNA complexes involved in alternative splicing by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
• 1996 Ph. D. Cambridge University, United Kingdom, Gabriele Varani's lab
• 1997-2000 Post-doctoral fellow, University of California Los Angeles, USA, Juli Feigon's lab
• 2000-2001 Research Associate, HHMI, University of California Los Angeles, USA, Doug Black’s lab
• 2001 Appointed Assistant Professor and Group Leader, ETH, Zürich, Switzerland
• Elected EMBO Member, 2009
• Young Investigator Award, EMBO, 2003
• Boyer-Parvin postdoctoral recognition award, MBI-UCLA, 2000
• Chancellor award for Postdoctoral research, UCLA, 2000
• Max Perutz Student Prize, LMB-MRC, 1996
Structural basis for -10 promoter element melting by environmentally induced sigma factors
Mar 2014, Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol.
Molecular basis of UG-rich RNA recognition by the human splicing factor TDP-43
Dec 2013, Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol.