MPI welcomes new Lise Meitner Group Leader Katerina Naydenova
New group leader will investigate cellular defence mechanisms and develop novel methods in the field of cryogenic electron microscopy
From January 2026, Katerina Naydenova will establish her independent Max Planck Research Group at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund. Her group will investigate how cells deal with danger in their cytosol and will develop new methods and technologies in the field of cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to improve the visualization of protein complexes in their native environment. Katerina was selected for the Lise Meitner Excellence Program by the Max Planck Society (MPS), which is designed to attract and promote exceptionally qualified female scientists. Her Lise Meitner Group will enjoy an autonomous status within the institute and will be supported with a generous budget
Katerina completed the Natural Science Tripos at the University of Cambridge, specialising in physics. During her PhD in the group of Chris Russo at the renowned MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, she elucidated the physical limits of imaging biological molecules using cryo-EM and created technologies to enhance its performance and expand its application. During this time, she contributed to the development of a new type of improved all-gold grids and a scalable grid manufacturing process – work that earned her the Max Perutz Prize for outstanding PhD research in 2020. As a postdoctoral fellow in Felix Randow’s lab, also at the MRC LMB, she investigated cell-autonomous immunity - the ability of non-specialized, non-immune cells to defend themselves against pathogens.
We are delighted to welcome Katerina as a new group leader at the MPI and wish her a smooth start and great success in building her research team.
Learn more about Katerina and her work in the following interview.
What will your research focus be and what lead you to this area of research?
Our group will develop in two complementary directions. On one side, we will uncover the fundamental molecular mechanisms by which cells detect, signal about and resolve danger in their cytosol, and elucidate the structural basis for these processes. Second, we will develop new technologies, especially in the field of cryogenic electron microscopy, that will enable us to visualise protein complexes in cells at high resolution. These methods will not only support our own work, but also that of the broader community of molecular and cell biologists.
The interest in the biological problem stemmed naturally from my previous work as a postdoc in the group of Felix Randow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where we mostly looked at how cells defend their cytosol against bacteria and intracellular parasites. Throughout this work we were gradually realising how multilayered and complex these defences are, and that actually many of these pathways may generalise well beyond the context of infection, to also neurodegeneration, muscle diseases and other pathologies. The processes that we are studying cannot, at present, be reconstituted in the test tube, so we know there must be some serious gaps in our understanding of what is going on in cells.
The desire to develop new technologies, of course, comes from the frustration when current technologies are not “good enough” to enable us to answer the biological questions we are interested in. The ability to actually build instruments dates back to my PhD and previous work with a fantastic mentor, Dr Chris Russo, also at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, who introduced me to the world of electron microscopy and method development, with his fearless approach to everything new. I have carried certain ways of thinking with me ever since I left his group. For example, when we cannot do some experiment successfully, we ask ourselves – are we limited by some fundamental physics, that make this absolutely impossible, or are we hitting some practical limit, that we can think about overcoming? New technologies help us get over these practical limits, but new technologies need to be invented and developed – they cannot be bought, hence the second line of our work. I quite enjoy that when we develop new methods and technologies, our work is actually of relevance to many other researchers, in a way also propelling their studies.
You are a physicist by training. What made you decide to “switch sides”?
Yes, that’s right, my training in physics actually dates back to my days in high school in Bulgaria, where I was lucky enough to have an exceptionally committed teacher, who organised lots of extracurricular classes and summer camps for us and taught us really advanced physics, all of this completely free. It turned out I was pretty good at maths and physics, and I really enjoyed that because it felt like science offers the endless possibility to understand the world around us. I participated in international physics competitions in high school, and this opened the door to world-class universities for me, so eventually I landed at the University of Cambridge to study Natural Sciences. This is a bit of a quirk of the Cambridge curriculum, there is no Physics course as such, it’s just treated as a sub-specialty of the Natural Sciences.
So in the first year of uni, I had courses in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Maths, and I really enjoyed that holistic view, I was interested in pretty much everything. I was particularly attracted to biology research because I felt that this is the most direct way of generating actionable ideas for improving human health and wellbeing: The connection from research to impact in our daily lives seemed most obvious. Basically, I just wanted to do something that’s “useful”, possibly somewhat disillusioned with the more and more abstract theoretical physics we were drowned in during the later courses, and somewhat questioning what’s the point of it all.
That’s when I started looking for a summer internship project, and I entertained the idea of contacting a few biology labs. This is how I was put in touch with Dr Chris Russo at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, who would later become my PhD advisor. It was just a perfect match, Chris had just started his group and like me he had a background in physics and engineering, so we really hit it off from the first day we met … and I spent 7 years working in his group, as an undergraduate, master’s, PhD student, and a short postdoc. We were working on technology development but in a biology institute, so I really enjoyed the constant exposure to biological questions and discussions with our colleagues there.
I don’t think I switched sides overnight, it was more like a slow drift. Still, I find the “maths” part of my brain is quite active, which really helps when you need to think about biology in a more quantitative way. I love working in biology because I believe that our research is useful and impactful for humanity. I find biology is way more unpredictable than physics and the complexities of biological problems, and all the surprises that biology constantly throws at us, baffle me to this day.
For my postdoc, I worked with Dr Felix Randow, an immunologist and microbiologist, also at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. He is probably the real “100% biologist” with an amazing intuition and exceptional creativity and it was really fun to work together and try to learn to think in new ways. With my pragmatic brain I think I will always be a bit of a different type, a physicist and a biologist in one.
Why did you choose to establish your group at the MPI Dortmund?
Technology development is slow and expensive, and requires a steady stream of long-term funding and commitment. The Max Planck Society has a history of supporting this type of “slow” science with long-term goals through the directorship positions. Only recently, with its programs like the Lise Meitner Excellence Program, through which our group is funded, this type of steady support is also offered to early career researches, which is why I decided to apply. Additionally, I had spent nearly 10 years at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, and I just felt like I needed a change of scenery (although it was a fantastic place to work at). I hope having a new environment and new colleagues here will allow us to also develop new ideas here, in fact I think this is already starting to happen.
The MPI in Dortmund felt like the natural environment for me to start the group, not only because of the world-class scientific facilities (light microscopy, electron microscopy, mass spectrometry and biophysics are especially important for our work), but also because this is one of the very few biology research institutes that maintains a staffed mechanical instrumentation workshop and continues to invest in equipping and modernising it. Having access to these instruments, and also to the expertise of the technical staff, is crucial for the success of our technology development work. I knew this was operating well here because I had been following the work of Dr Sebastian Tacke and Prof Stefan Raunser, as well as that of the late Prof Philippe Bastiaens and his department, for quite some time. I hope that together we can continue investing into the instrumentation workshop and into the professional development of our colleagues who work there.
Finally, on a personal level, I found the directors here, Stefan Raunser and Andrea Musacchio, very approachable, and just fantastic colleagues and mentors. They are very supportive of independent groups, which are a bit of a novelty in the Max Planck Society, and are committed to creating an environment where we can work as efficiently as possible. For example, the entire institute subscribes to a culture of openness, and we share access to all equipment in all departments, nothing is behind locked doors. This really resonated with me and with how I think we should be doing science together. I hope we will have many exciting collaborations with the departments and other research groups here, enabled by our shared interest in molecular mechanisms in the context of cell biology.
You have been quite successful in developing technologies to improve the capabilities in cryo-EM. Where do you see the future of cryo-EM?
Cryo-EM is already great. In fact, we have a very good grasp of the theory that tells us how good can it be, and we know that the performance of cryo-EM for the determination of protein structures these days is exactly as good as it can be theoretically. There are still some frontiers that could be pushed, for example if we could do cryo-EM at even “more cryo” conditions (lower temperature), the determination of the structures of smaller proteins or protein domains, that are currently intractable by cryo-EM, should become possible. Additionally, lower-temperature cryo-EM can give us access to more precise chemical information in all the protein structures that we determine, something that is currently quite challenging due to the effects of radiation damage, the bane of cryo-EM.
Another problem that still remains open is more computational, and relates to how to determine and represent the structures of flexible proteins, which cannot be fully described by a set of static atomic positions.
After all, most proteins are inherently flexible and that relates to how they perform their function, and cryo-EM is well positioned to capture information about such flexibility, but we need to think hard about how to extract and represent this information, currently these methods are really at their infancy.
And really, the biggest limitations of cryo-EM become apparent when we try to apply it to look at proteins in their native context – in cells, where they are ultimately most interesting and relevant. The reality remains that this is insanely difficult, and the results we can get in this type of applications fall short of the expected theoretical “best”. So that tells us there is still a lot of work to do, mainly in improving the technologies and software, and a lot of gains to be made. Structures that were impossible to determine just one year ago, gradually come within reach as the technologies improve, and this is really exciting.
As cryo-EM becomes better and gains popularity, we also spent a lot of time thinking about how can we make this technology more accessible to all researchers who want to use it. So I think the future of cryo-EM is to be not only better, but also cheaper.
How do you relax after a hard day at work?
Actually, my ultimate way to recharge my batteries is going to the seaside. Obviously, this can’t happen every day here in Dortmund, but that’s definitely what I like to spend a good portion of my holidays on. I also obsessively read non-fiction (especially during holidays), I love everything to do with nature, exploration, biographies of scientists, science history, animal physiology, biodiversity, nature conservation, geology, evolution, etc, and I have probably read every book about polar exploration that’s out there. Even when I am not travelling, I love thinking about adventures. I have also recently gotten into birdwatching. I like that it makes you more present and helps you connect with nature and notice sounds, plants, and animals around you that we normally don’t pay any attention to at all.
Now, with the recent move to Dortmund and with all the excitement around setting up the new lab, and also a new life here, all my daily routines have completely gone downhill. I am looking forward to picking up some new activities when things are a bit less hectic. Ideally, I need a bit more sport (I like yoga and pilates) and a bit more art in my life. I also love DIY but these days all my DIY energy is spent in the lab and on assembling furniture for my new flat here, hopefully in the future I will have time for bigger, more creative projects.