Biography
Dr. Truttmann obtained his undergraduate degree in molecular biology as well as his master's degree in biochemistry and biophysics at Biocenter, University of Basel, Switzerland. In 2006, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Christoph Dehio at the same institute and subsequently obtained his Ph.D. degree in microbiology in 2010. Following a two year detour into financial and management consulting, in 2013, Dr. Truttmann joined the laboratory of Dr. Hidde Ploegh at Whitehead institute for biomedical research / MIT as a postdoctoral fellow. Since 2018, Dr. Truttmann is an Assistant Professor in Molecular and Integrative Physiology at the University of Michigan.
Areas of Interest
Aggregation-associated, neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) pose a major societal and economic burden that drastically affects the lives of both patients and family caretakers. A unifying theme that connects these NDs is their strong association with an aging-dependent, progressive failure of cellular maintenance mechanisms that control pathological protein misfolding and aggregation.
The overall focus of our laboratory is to determine the impact of post-translational protein modifications (PTM) on proteostasis in the context of aging and aging-associated diseases. We are particularly interested in a novel PTM, termed AMPylation, that regulates the activity of heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) family proteins. We employ numerous genetic, biochemical as well as behavioral approaches in conjunction with several model systems (Caenorhabditis elegans, mice, primary human tissue) to elucidate how PTMs control chaperone activity and regulate proteostasis as well as protein aggregation processes.