Axel T. Brunger (born November 25, 1956) is a

German American German Americans (, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. According to the United States Census Bureau's figures from 2022, German Americans make up roughly 41 million people in the US, which is approximately 12% of the pop ...

biophysicist Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

. He is Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, and a

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland with additional facilities in Ashburn, Virginia. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American busin ...

Investigator. He served as the Chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology (2013–2017).

Early life

Brunger was born in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

, on November 25, 1956. He graduated with a degree in Physics and Mathematics from the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (, also referred to as UHH) is a public university, public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('':de:Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen, ...

in 1977. He completed his Diplom in Physics from the

in 1980. He completed his PhD in Biophysics from

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; ) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Established in 1868 by King Ludwig II ...

in 1982, advised by Klaus Schulten.

Academic career

Brunger held a NATO postdoctoral fellowship to work with

Martin Karplus Martin Karplus (; March 15, 1930 – December 28, 2024) was an Austrian and American theoretical chemist. He was the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. He was also the director of the Biophysical Chemistry L ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, where he subsequently became a research associate in the department of chemistry after a brief return to Germany. He joined the molecular biophysics and biochemistry department at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in 1987 and moved to

in 2000. Brunger was elected to the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 2005 and won the inaugural

DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences The DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences is a prize in the field of computational biology. It is awarded annually for "the most accessible and innovative development or application of computer technology to enhance research in the life scienc ...

in 2011.

Research

Brunger is known for developing a computer program called CNS used for solving structures based on

X-ray diffraction X-ray diffraction is a generic term for phenomena associated with changes in the direction of X-ray beams due to interactions with the electrons around atoms. It occurs due to elastic scattering, when there is no change in the energy of the waves. ...

or solution NMR data, which was first released in 1992. The program is a major extension of a 1987 program developed with John Kuriyan and Karplus called

X-PLOR X-PLOR is a computer software package for computational structural biology originally developed by Axel T. Brunger at Yale University. It was first published in 1987 as an offshoot of CHARMM - a similar program that ran on supercomputers made by C ...

, whose original inspiration was motivated by

Marius Clore G. Marius Clore MAE, FRSC, FMedSci, FRS is a British-born, Anglo-American molecular biophysicist and structural biologist. He was born in London, U.K. and is a dual U.S./U.K. Citizen. He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fe ...

's efforts in interpreting NMR data and which has been extended by Clore's continued development of XPLOR-NIH. These programs make use of a method called

simulated annealing Simulated annealing (SA) is a probabilistic technique for approximating the global optimum of a given function. Specifically, it is a metaheuristic to approximate global optimization in a large search space for an optimization problem. ...

in conjunction with

molecular dynamics Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation method for analyzing the Motion (physics), physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a fixed period of time, giving a view of the dynamics ( ...

to refine protein structures. X-PLOR was the first time a modern optimization technique was applied to the problem of crystallographic refinement. Brunger also subsequently introduced the RFree technique to cross-validate the model given the observed data. In the mid-1990s, his team extended X-PLOR into a complete system to solve structures, which then became the more full-featured tool CNS, capable of performing a series of steps necessary for crystallography structure determination, such as obtaining phases from experimental data and

molecular replacement Molecular replacement (MR) is a method of solving the phase problem in X-ray crystallography. MR relies upon the existence of a previously solved protein structure which is similar to our unknown structure from which the diffraction data is deriv ...

phasing from known homologous structures. Brunger's research group currently studies the molecular mechanism of

synaptic vesicle In a neuron, synaptic vesicles (or neurotransmitter vesicles) store various neurotransmitters that are exocytosis, released at the chemical synapse, synapse. The release is regulated by a voltage-dependent calcium channel. Vesicle (biology), Ves ...

fusion in

neurotransmission Neurotransmission (Latin: ''transmissio'' "passage, crossing" from ''transmittere'' "send, let through") is the process by which signaling molecules called neurotransmitters are released by the axon terminal of a neuron (the presynaptic neuron ...

References

External links

Biography of Axel T. Brunger

Profile of Axel T. Brunger

PNAS Inaugural Profile

Website of Axel T. Brunger
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brunger, Axel T. 1956 births 21st-century American physicists University of Hamburg alumni Technical University of Munich alumni Emigrants from West Germany to the United States Harvard University staff Yale Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry faculty Living people Howard Hughes Medical Investigators Crystallographers Stanford University School of Medicine faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences