Christian Behrends
Studies autophagy and ubiquitin pathways, and in 2015 reported SLC38A9 as a member of the Rag-Ragulator complex that relays amino acid availability to mTORC1.
Professor for Systems Biology of Neurodegenerative Diseases, SyNergy, LMU Munich (since 2016) · Emmy Noether Group Leader, Goethe University Frankfurt (2011–2016) · Postdoctoral fellow, Harvard Medical School (2007–2010)
Portrait: Behrends Lab, LMU Munich
Christian Behrends trained at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry near Munich and did postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School with J. Wade Harper. He then started his own group at Goethe University in Frankfurt and since 2016 has been a professor at LMU Munich. His lab studies autophagy, the cell's recycling system, and ubiquitin signalling.
The study in the Atlas, from his Frankfurt group with Jennifer Jung as first author, looked at SLC38A9, a protein sitting on the lysosome, the compartment where mTORC1 is switched on by amino acids. They found that SLC38A9 binds the Rag GTPases and Ragulator in a way that depends on amino acids. Removing it lowered mTORC1 activity, and having too much of it made mTORC1 overactive even when amino acids were scarce.
This placed SLC38A9 inside the machinery that tells mTORC1 whether food is available. Related work from other laboratories at about the same time found that SLC38A9 can also act as a sensor of the amino acid arginine.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | M | Amino Acid-Dependent mTORC1 Regulation by the Lysosomal Membrane Protein SLC38A9 JUN2015 Senior author: identifies the lysosomal protein SLC38A9 as part of the Rag-Ragulator complex that passes amino acid availability on to mTORC1. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Christian Behrends.
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- Jennifer Jung Biochemist from Christian Behrends' group in Frankfurt who showed that the lysosomal amino acid transporter SLC38A9 helps switch on mTORC1, and who studied regulators of autophagy
Every researcher with a profile →
On the programme
Meetings in the Atlas calendar where Christian Behrends is listed among the speakers or organisers.
- past International Autophagy Conference 2026 (Norwegian, German & UK Networks) ↗ 25–27 May 2026 ·
Oslo, Norway · ★★
All meetings in the calendar →
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