Dr. Alexey Amunts joined the Institute of Bio-Architecture and Bio-Interaction (IBABI) in Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation in January 2026. Dr. Amunts earned his Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University in 2011 for work on the X-ray crystallographic determination of Photosystem I in the laboratory of Nathan Nelson. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge under the mentorship of Venki Ramakrishnan, focusing on cryo-EM studies of the mitoribosome. This work contributed to major advances in structural biology known as the "Resolution Revolution".

In 2015, Dr. Amunts established an independent research group at Stockholm University, where he became a tenured Associate Professor. His team investigates the molecular mechanisms of bioenergetics and protein synthesis, combining experimental and computational approaches to study energy conversion from the molecular to the cellular level, and how these processes are shaped by evolution and human disease. Dr. Amunts also played a leading role in founding the Swedish National Cryo-EM Facility. In 2024, he took a sabbatical at Westlake University, and was appointed Honorary Chair Professor at Huazhong Agricultural University and Shandong University. He is a Humboldt Scholar at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund and serve as a group leader at the University of Münster. 

Major Awards and Honors

· Honorary Chair Professor, Huazhong Agricultural University (2025) 

· Humboldt Award, the Max Planck Institute (2024)

· EMBO Young Investigator (2019)

· Cancer Foundation Junior Investigator Award (2019)

· Lennart Nilsson Award for Scientific Imaging (2016) 

· George Palade Award, Microscopy Society of America (2015)

Research Directions

Mitochondria are central to the cellular architects of cellular energy conversion, and their function is linked to their intricate internal structure. The inner mitochondrial membrane is folded into cristae, dynamic subcompartments that organize the oxidative phosphorylation. Advances in cryo-EM have provided atomic views of isolated respiratory complexes, yet a fundamental question remains unresolved: how these machines are organized, regulated, and remodeled within native membranes. We lack a mechanistic understanding of how the nanoscale arrangement and conformational dynamics within cristae dictate organelle function and how their disruption contributes to cellular decline.

Amunts Lab aims to overcome this limitation by resolving mitochondrial energy-converting complexes in-situ and at higher resolution across defined functional states. Our central hypothesis is that the mitochondrial dysfunction in aging and disease is driven by the disassembly of supramolecular complexes and the loss of specific, functionally critical conformational states that are only observable in their native cellular context. We further hypothesize that cristae formation is orchestrated through ordered assembly of these complexes into defined oligomeric arrays.

Selected Publications

1. Structural basis of mitochondrial membrane bending by the I-II-III-IV supercomplex. Nature 615 (7954), 934-938 (2023). Mühleip, A., Flygaard, R. K., Baradaran, R., Haapanen, O., Gruhl, T., Tobiasson, V., Maréchal, A., Sharma, V. & Amunts, A.

2. Mechanism of mitoribosomal small subunit biogenesis and preinitiation. Nature 606 (7914), 603-608 (2022). Itoh, Y., Khawaja, A., Laptev, I., Cipullo, M., Atanassov, I., Sergiev, P., Rorbach, J. & Amunts, A.

3. Mechanism of membrane-tethered mitochondrial protein synthesis. Science 371 (6536), 846-849 (2021). Itoh, Y., Andrell, J., Choi, A., Richter, U., Maiti, P., Best, R., Barrientos, A., Battersby, B. & Amunts, A.

4. The structure of the human mitochondrial ribosome. Science 348 (6230), 95-98 (2015). Amunts, A., Brown, A., Toots, J., Scheres, S. H. W. & Ramakrishnan, V.

5. Structure of the yeast mitochondrial large ribosomal subunit. Science 343 (6178), 1485-1489 (2014). Amunts, A., Brown, A., Bai, X., Llácer, J. L., Hussain, T., Emsley, P., Long, F., Murshudov, G., Scheres, S. H. W. & Ramakrishnan, V.

6. The structure of a plant photosystem I supercomplex at 3.4 Å resolution. Nature 447 (7140), 58-63 (2007). Amunts, A., Drory, O. & Nelson, N.