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Prof. Dr. Matteo Bergami
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Dr. Elisa Motori
“I’m a biochemist with a deep fascination for mitochondria and how cells adapt their metabolism, especially in the brain.“
Dr. Elisa Motori, originally from Italy, is a neuroscientist exploring how metabolic changes in brain cells influence their vulnerability and capacity for repair.
Dr. Motori began her scientific journey at the University of Bologna, earning a Master’s in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 2007 and a PhD in Biochemistry in 2012. Early in her career, she investigated astrocytes - glial cells critical for brain function - discovering a signaling cascade activated by acute brain injury that drives mitochondrial remodeling through fission-fusion dynamics. This work, published in Cell Metabolism, established a link between autophagy and functional mitochondrial changes during inflammation.
Scientific Career
During her postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing (Cologne, Germany), Dr. Motori challenged the view that adult neurons are metabolically inflexible. Using cerebellar Purkinje cells as a model, she showed that neurons activate mitochondrial stress responses to maintain function under disease-relevant stress, delaying degeneration (Science Advances, 2020). She also uncovered how mitochondrial–ER contact sites in reactive astrocytes drive angiogenesis and vascular remodeling after cortical injury (Cell Metabolism, 2020), highlighting the therapeutic potential of targeting metabolism in both neurons and glial cells.
Since 2022, Dr. Motori has led her laboratory at the Institute for Biochemistry and CECAD in Cologne, and as of 2024, she also leads a group at the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne. Her team investigates how metabolic rewiring supports brain repair and regenerative potential, and her work has recently expanded into cancer neuroscience, exploring how metabolic interactions between neurons and cancer cells influence disease progression.
Dr. Motori has made key contributions to mitochondrial biology, deepening our understanding of how cellular metabolism shapes neuronal function and advancing the field of cellular neuroscience. Her work continues to illuminate the metabolic foundations of brain resilience, offering new avenues for therapy and regenerative medicine.
Selected Publications
Joaquim M, Altin S, Bulimaga MB, Simões T, Nolte H, Bader V, Franchino CA, Plouzennec S, Szczepanowska K, Marchesan E, Hofmann K, Krüger M, Ziviani E, Trifunovic A, Chevrollier A, Winklhofer KF, Motori E, Odenthal M, Escobar-Henriques M. Mitofusin 2 displays fusion-independent roles in proteostasis surveillance. Nature Communications 2025 Feb 10;16(1):1501. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-56673-5.
Filograna R, Gerlach J, Choi HN, Rigoni G, Barbaro M, Oscarson M, Lee S, Tiklova K, Ringnér M, Koolmeister C, Wibom R, Riggare S, Nennesmo I, Perlmann T, Wredenberg A, Wedell A, Motori E, Svenningsson P, Larsson NG. PARKIN is not required to sustain OXPHOS function in adult mammalian tissues. NPJ Parkinsons Disease 2024 Apr 29;10(1):93. doi: 10.1038/s41531-024-00707-0
Zhu X, Xie X, Das H, Tan BG, Shi Y, Al-Behadili A, Peter B, Motori E, Valenzuela S, Posse V, Gustafsson CM, Hällberg BM, Falkenberg M. Non-coding 7S RNA inhibits transcription via mitochondrial RNA polymerase dimerization. Cell 2022 Jun 23;185(13):2309-2323.e24. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.05.006.
Motori E*, Atanassov I, Wendler S, Folz-Donahue K, Sakthivelu V, Giavalisco P, Toni N, Puyal JP, Larsson NG*. Neuronal metabolic rewiring promotes resilience to neurodegeneration caused by mitochondrial dysfunction. Science Advances 2020 Aug 28;6(35):eaba8271. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aba8271
Goebel J, Engelhardt E, Pelzer P, Sakthivelu V, Jahn HM, Jevtic M, Folz-Donahue K, Kukat C, Schauss A, Frese CK, Giavalisco P, Ghanem A, Conzelmann KK, Motori E*, Bergami M*. Mitochondria-Endoplasmic Reticulum Contacts in Reactive Astrocytes Promote Vascular Remodeling. Cell Metabolism 2020 Apr 7;31(4):791-808.e8 doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2020.03.005