Curriculum Vitae

I began my career in electron microscopy under the supervision of Dr. Raúl Padrón at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC). Then I moved to Germany, where I applied cryo-electron microscopy to isolated actomyosin complexes supervised by Dr. Rasmus Schroeder in the Department of Dr. Ken Holmes (Max Plank Institute for Medical Research).

I turned my attention to tomography and associated techniques working at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried in the Dept. of Dr. Wolfgang Baumeister. There, as post-doc and project manager, I contributed to the development of an approach that proved one can obtain meaningful macromolecular structures by classifying and averaging subtomograms essentially moving single particle analysis from 2D to 3D. We presented the first ribosomal atlas of an intact cell (S. melliferum), revealed the native 3D organization of polysomes and solved the structure of hibernating ribosomes in vitro and inside intact bacterial cells. My expertise covers a broad range of techniques in cryo-electron microscopy, from single particle analysis to focused ion beam micromachinery for cellular tomography.

After having served at the Netherlands Centre for Electron Nanoscopy (NeCEN) and the Institute of Genetics and of Molecular and Cellular Biology (IGBMC), I joined the Forschungszentrum Jülich as Cryo-EM facility manager to perseverate in the structural analysis of macromolecular complexes, this time in those involved in autophagy

Contact

Phone: +49 2461 61-2032
email: j.ortiz@fz-juelich.de