Göttingen Graduate Center for Neurosciences, Biophysics, and Molecular Biosciences

Opazo, Felipe, Dr.*

Group leader of Molecular Probes for Quantitative Neurosciences


  • Bachelor in Molecular Biotechnology Engineering. University of Chile; Santiago, Chile 1997 – 2001
  • Undergraduate research at State University of New York; Plattsburgh, USA, 2000
  • Master´s in Biological Sciences, University of Chile; Santiago, Chile, 2001 – 2003
  • Visiting Scientist at EMBL, Department of Structural and Computational Biology; Heidelberg, Germany, 2002 – 2003
  • PhD student at the International Max Planck Research School of Neurosciences and Georg-August University Göttingen; Göttingen, Germany, 2003 – 2008
  • PhD in Neurosciences, Georg-August University of Göttingen; Göttingen, Germany, 2008
  • Postdoctoral fellow at the European Neuroscience Institute (ENI); Göttingen, Germany, 2008 – 2014
  • Senior scientist at University Medical Center (UMG); Göttingen, Germany, 2014 – 2016
  • Group leader of “Molecular Probes for Quantitative Neurosciences” at the Center for Biostructural Imaging of Neurodegeneration (BIN), Göttingen, Germany, since 2016



Major Research Interests

My research focuses on finding molecular tools to study neurons' nano-anatomy and other biological systems like immune cells. We develop tailor-made small binders like nanobodies to detect and quantify molecules and determine their arrangements. For this, we use different nanoscopy techniques like STED, STORM, DNA-PAINT, and lately also nanoSIMS to determine with high precision the molecular localization and quantities of our proteins of interest. Besides, we use these and other molecular tools to visualize or modulate mechanisms associated with neurodegenerative processes, such as in Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's Diseases


Homepage Department/Research Group
https://opazolab.de/


Selected Recent Publications


  • Gerdes, C., Waal, N., Offner, T., Fornasiero, E.F., Wender, N., Verbarg, H., Manzini, I., Trenkwalder, C., Mollenhauer, B., Strohäker, T., Zweckstetter, M., Becker, S., Rizzoli, S.O., Basmanav, F.B., & Opazo, F. (2020) A nanobody-based fluorescent reporter reveals human α-synuclein in the cell cytosol. Nat Commun, 11, 2729.

  • Sograte-Idrissi, S., Schlichthaerle, T., Duque-Afonso, C.J., Alevra, M., Strauss, S., Moser, T., Jungmann, R., Rizzoli, S.O., & Opazo, F.. (2020) Circumvention of common labelling artefacts using secondary nanobodies. Nanoscale, 12, 10226–10239.

  • Castro, M.A.G. de, Wildhagen, H., Sograte-Idrissi, S., Hitzing, C., Binder, M., Trepel, M., Engels, N., & Opazo, F.. (2019) Differential organization of tonic and chronic B cell antigen receptors in the plasma membrane. Nat Commun, 10, 820.

  • Sograte-Idrissi, S., Oleksiievets, N., Isbaner, S., Eggert-Martinez, M., Enderlein, J., Tsukanov, R., & Opazo, F.* (2019) Nanobody Detection of Standard Fluorescent Proteins Enables Multi-Target DNA-PAINT with High Resolution and Minimal Displacement Errors. Cells, 8, 48.

  • Götzke, H., Kilisch, M., Martínez-Carranza, M., Sograte-Idrissi, S., Rajavel, A., Schlichthaerle, T., Engels, N., Jungmann, R., Stenmark, P., Opazo, F.*, & Frey, S*. (2019) The ALFA-tag is a highly versatile tool for nanobody-based bioscience applications. Nat Commun, 10, 4403.

  • Maidorn, M., Olichon, A., Rizzoli, S.O., & Opazo, F. (2018) Nanobodies reveal an extra-synaptic population of SNAP-25 and Syntaxin 1A in hippocampal neurons. Mabs, 11, 305–321.