My main research interests are: 

• the functional and structural characterization of membrane transporters and channels
• investigations on protein translation in (pathogenic) fungi

Coordinator of 'Molecular Modeling and Analysis in Structural Biology' course for master students

Coordinator of 'Medical Structural Biology' course for bachelor students

Co-lecturer of "Scientific Reading and Communication" course for bachelor students

Previously:

Co-lecturer of "Celfysiologie: Energie & Structuur" course for bachelor students

Co-lecturer in 'Introduction into Biomedical Sciences' course for master students

Co-lecturer in 'Advanced Crystallography' course for master students

As trained structural biologist  (PhD in 2009, Free University of Berlin), Albert Guskov combines macromolecular X-ray crystallography, single particle cryo-EM and modelling in his original investigations of membrane proteins and macromolecular complexes. The main lines of his research are:

1. structural and functional characterization of Solute Carrier family 1 of transporters;
2. bacterial metallohomeostasis;
3. protein translation apparatus in pathogenic fungi.  

Albert's group has significantly contributed into mechanistic understanding of mechanisms of transmembrane transport (over 20 publications during past five years) via primary and secondary active transporters as well as channels.  

Albert Guskov has published >50 peer-reviewed papers that received >3,800 citations (Google Scholar); he received various personal grants from NWO, including NWO Vidi grant. As a recognition of his scientific excellence, Albert was awarded an honorary professorship at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (2019) and a medal of excellence for contribution in science (2021).   

In addition to that, Albert is  a member of Program Committee monitoring the educational standards of Master programs at FSE, a regular member of PhD committees, and an active peer-reviewer (top peer reviewer award 2017) for such journals as Science and Nature journals, Structure, eLife, Biochim Biophys Acta, etc., as well as a grant reviewer for various International and national funding agencies – DFG (Germany), CNRS (France), FWO (Belgium), Helmholtz Foundation (Germany), NSC (Poland).

Three top publications 2021-2023

1. Colucci E, Anshari ZR, Patino-Ruiz MF, Nemchinova M, Whittaker J, Slotboom DJ & Guskov A. Mutation in glutamate transporter homologue GltTk provides insights into pathologic mechanism of episodic ataxia 6, Nature Communications, (2023). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37503-y

EA6 is an example of a neglected rare disease. In this contribution we investigated the structural basis of this pathological condition by combination of solid support membrane physiology and cryo-EM.

1. Zgadzay Y, Kolosova O, Stetsenko A, Wu C, Bruchlen D, Usachev K, Validov S, Jenner L, Rogachev A, Yusupova G, Sachs MS, Guskov A, Yusupov M. E-site drug specificity of the human pathogen Candida albicansribosome, Science Advances, 8, eabn1062, (2022). doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn1062

 In this work we reported the first structure of a ribosome from the highly pathogenic fungus Candida albicans. The obtained structure explained the inherent resistance of Candida albicans to cycloheximide.

1. Nemchinova M, Melcr J, Wassenaar TA, Marrink SJ, Guskov A. Asymmetric CorA Gating Mechanism as Observed by Molecular Dynamics Simulations. J Chem Inf Model. 61(5):2407-2417 (2021) doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.1c00261

This is the most detailed characterization of gating mechanism in CorA proteins using molecular dynamics simulations.