Daniela Nicastro MS, PhD

Daniela Nicastro, M.S., Ph.D., is a structural cell biologist with almost 25 years of experience in electron microscopy of cellular structures. Driven by important biological questions, she develops and applies innovative imaging techniques that allow visualizing the 3D structures of native macromolecular machines and organelles inside cells with a resolution that is sufficiently high to accomplish goals such as detecting structural changes between conformational states. This is important for understanding how proteins interact, work, and are spatially arranged to perform normal cellular functions, and how their dysfunction leads to diseases.

Dr. Nicastro was born and raised in Germany, where she obtained her M.S. (1995) and Ph.D. (2000) in Biology from the Ludwig-Maximilians University (Munich, Germany), studying sensory neurons of insects. In parallel to her thesis study at the University, Dr. Nicastro also joined the Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich from 1998-2001, where she transitioned technically from classical electron microscopy of chemically-fixed insect tissues to cellular cryo-electron tomography, a three-dimensional electron microscopy method that provides images of life-like preserved (rapidly frozen), sub-cellular structures at molecular resolution. She then continued her research career in the U.S., 2001-2006 as a postdoctoral fellow in the National Center for Research Resources for 3D Electron Microscopy of Cells at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and since 2006 as Assistant Professor and later as a tenured Associate Professor (since 2013) in the Biology Department at Brandeis University near Boston. The Nicastro lab has made important contributions both technically and biologically, e.g. by advancing cryo-electron microscopy methods to image cellular structures at higher resolution, taking a multi-length scale approach from studying intact tissues to small molecular motors, and applying cryo-electron tomography for the first time to samples from patients (with ciliary disease).

In 2015, Dr. Nicastro joined the Departments of Cell Biology and Biophysics at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where she played a key role in building a new state-of-the-art cryo-electron microscopy facility. She is also expanding her research program in the rapidly growing area of cryo-electron microscopy; one new focus will be the visualization of native, dynamic DNA-interacting complexes inside normal and cancerous cells, which will provide unique views of nuclear machines and events that are highly relevant to a better understanding of cancer initiation, promotion, progression, and/or treatment