ERC Synergy Grant for MPI Director Kai Johnsson
On the trail of contacts: European Research Council funds pioneering MitoContact project to investigate communication between mitochondria and other cell components
Kai Johnsson, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, has been awarded a Synergy Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). In the funded project MitoContact, he will work with two scientists from Switzerland to investigate how mitochondria come into contact and communicate with other cell components.
© MPI for Medical Research
- ERC Synergy Grants support work on the most challenging scientific questions, which, due to their complexity, require collaboration between several researchers.
- Kai Johnsson receives the ERC Synergy Grant together with Suliana Manley from EPFL, Lausanne, and Wanda Kukulski from the University of Bern for their joint project MitoContact.
- The grant amounts to approximately 12 million euros over six years. The project will start in the first quarter of 2026.
“I am delighted about the ERC Synergy Grant – it is a great recognition for our team and our shared idea,” says Kai Johnsson, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research. “The funding gives us the opportunity to explore new technological approaches and take decisive steps towards a better understanding of the dynamics and functioning of membrane contact sites. In the long term, this may also open up new therapeutic avenues.”
Research team aims to understand contact sites
Mitochondria are cell components that are referred to as the “powerhouses” of cells because they produce most of the energy required by the cell. They have to meet a dual challenge: to maintain their own life cycle while supplying the entire cell with energy and signals.
The interfaces through which mitochondria come into contact and exchange information with other cell components, known as membrane contact sites, play a central role in this process. However, little is known about their diversity, organization, and functioning.
Recorder proteins developed to record cell activities
This is where the joint project MitoContact, now funded by an ERC Synergy Grant, comes in: With their research, the team led by Suliana Manley, Wanda Kukulski, and Kai Johnsson aims to gain a deeper understanding of the role of membrane contact sites. To this end, the three scientists will combine and further develop the various methods they have already developed in their laboratories. Kai Johnsson develops chemical-biological tools and fluorophores for functional cell and organism studies at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research. One such tool is novel sensor proteins that can record cellular events like a high-resolution recorder and enable subsequent evaluation. These recorders can be specifically targeted at membrane contact sites and significantly advance research in this area.
Joining forces for a common research goal
The President of the European Research Council Maria Leptin says: “Collaboration is at the heart of the ERC Synergy Grants. In our latest round, teams of researchers will join forces to address the most complex scientific problems together – this time, they are more international than ever. The competition was fierce, with many outstanding proposals left unfunded.”
About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organization for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialization. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Since November 2021 Maria Leptin has been the President of the ERC. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than 16 billion euros, as part of the Horizon Europe program, under the responsibility of European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, Ekaterina Zaharieva.
