Karolin Luger

Karolin Luger is an Austrian-American biochemist and biophysicist known for her work with nucleosomes and discovery of the three-dimensional structure of chromatin. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Biochemistry Department.

Life Luger was born the youngest child after several brothers. Though not interested in mathematics, electronics, or physics, as her brothers were, she became fascinated with biology. She has stated that she chose a career in science during middle school, when she realized that "not everything was 'known' yet".

Luger is married and has one daughter.

Career In 1997, as a postdoc with Timothy J Richmond, Luger was first author on the paper that described the first structure determined for the nucleosome. The structure was discovered by X-ray crystallography. She also proposed that histone-DNA bonds are weaker at points where less of the histone contacts the DNA, which was confirmed by Michelle Wang in a 2009 paper. After several years at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Luger was hired by Colorado State University in 1999. Her work there includes extensive further research on the nucleosome's three-dimensional structure.

Since 2010, Luger has done significant studies of histones, researching the connection between their chaperone proteins and acetylation, as well as variant structures. Histones are important in the process of gene expression, and their positioning as determined by chaperone proteins is essential to that role. The chaperones also can change the conformation of the nucleosome as a whole. Luger's research as of 2012 also comprises several other areas of study with chromatin, including the processes of DNA replication, transcription, recombination, and repair in chromatin. Two years later, Luger was appointed as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

In 2012, Luger was chosen to be the National Lecturer for the Biophysical Society's 2013 meeting.

In 2014, Luger was named 2014 Fellow Of The Biophysical Society

In 2017, Luger has been selected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2018, Luger was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2023, Luger was named a CU distinguished Professor

In 2023, Luger, Rhodes and Richmond were awarded the World Laureates Association Prize for elucidating the structure of the nucleosome at the atomic level