Bringing more light into the darkness

Never before did Karin Busch have so much time to immerse herself in research. Now that her three children are grown up and studying at university, she can get even more intensely involved in her work – for example, drawing up funding applications and acquiring new projects. Together with her colleagues, she would also like to get a new research training group off the ground …

The research grant from the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) which cell biologist Busch was awarded – together with a biochemist from Scotland and a neurobiologist from the USA – came just at the right time. “It’s like a gift, I’m really happy,” she says. “Sometimes you have ideas which seem to be crazy and which are out of the question for conventional research funding.” The HFSP, an international programme designed to strengthen outstanding research in the life sciences, expressly calls upon researchers, however, to leave well-trodden paths in order to discover new things. “It allows exploratory research based on knowledge that we have acquired over the years.” Also, it’s fantastic, she says, that she was able to look for outstanding partners from all over the world with whom she could tackle unsolved puzzles. “What I like especially is that interdisciplinary working is one of the conditions of the grant; that pools expertise and permits synergies.”

The German-Scottish-American team aims to understand the importance which an efficient energy supply to the nerve cells has for forming long-term memory. It is a field which has scarcely been studied so far. Specifically, the group is looking into how ion currents regulate the central enzyme in energy metabolism, the ATP synthase, in the so-called mitochondria of the cranial nerves.

Mitochondria are Karin Busch’s hobby. Like small organs in the interior of cells, these structures (called organelles) – sometimes more spherical, sometimes less – see to it that the organism is supplied with the energy it needs. The processes involved are extremely complex and have already provided generations of scientists with material for research. There are still enough unanswered questions. “I could talk about mitochondria for hours,” Karin Busch enthuses. The fact that nowadays research can be carried out on the molecular processes in the mitochondria in living cells, is down to her. Young people from all over the world come to see her in Münster in order to learn the technique she developed of single-cell microscopy in mitochondria. With this method, the movements of proteins in the two membranes of the organelles can be followed, providing deep insights into the energy machinery.

Karin Busch grew up in Bensheim, in the south of the state of Hesse, without any academic role models in her family. As a teenager she wanted to be a travel writer – or an explorer. After studying biochemistry and gaining her diploma, then doing teacher training in biology and chemistry, she wrote her doctoral thesis on plant biochemistry at the University of Tübingen in the mid-1990s, and that sparked her enthusiasm. “Research has gripped me ever since,” she says. After various academic steps – including a post-doctorate at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and being a team leader and then an associate professor in Osnabrück – she moved to Münster University in 2015. In her private life, her home is still in Osnabrück where her husband, likewise a professor, works.

She already has on her agenda the next research questions beside the HFSP project: what role does the ATP synthase play in the occurrence of muscle weakness and in ageing? And how can the efficiency of the enzyme be influenced? “I don’t like letting go. When something grabs me, I want to understand it,” says Karin Busch, who finds an alternative to work in gardening and mountain tours.

One day a week, she still sits at the microscope herself – something she still insists on doing despite her duties as a university teacher. When she is sitting in a darkened laboratory, observing fluorescent cells and molecules under the microscope, a good metaphor occurs to her for what she most likes doing: she is bringing light into the darkness.

Dr. Christina Hoppenbrock

This article is from the brochure "Twelve months, twelve people", published in February 2025.

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