The biochemist was awarded the renowned Alfried Krupp Prize for his research on the genetic and molecular basis of mitochondrial function.
Lucas T. Jae uses a unique screening system to study the role of mitochondria in human disease processes. Mitochondria are cell organelles that are considered the "power plants of the cell". Since they play a key role in metabolism, defects in them lead to severe, mostly incurable diseases in humans, such as a number of hereditary metabolic disorders and myopathies as well as age-related diseases in the areas of neurodegeneration and cardiovascular diseases. Mitochondrial stress processes are easy to depict in models, but are largely not understood in humans.
