Terje Johansen is a professor and group leader at the Department of Medical Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway. 

Johansen and coworkers contributed significantly to a breakthrough in the field of autophagy by their discovery of mammalian selective autophagy receptors. They identified p62/SQSTM1 and NBR1 as the first selective autophagy substrates and cargo receptors for degradation of ubiquitinated targets by autophagy. Their degradation depends on a direct interaction with ATG8 family proteins present at the inner membrane surface of forming autophagosomes, and binding is mediated by a linear motif they named LIR (LC3-interacting region). Johansen’s group has identified a number of novel interaction partners for the ATG8 family proteins. Several of these ATG8 interacting proteins are members of the basal autophagy apparatus instrumental in forming the autophagosomes. Johansen aims in his research to elucidate molecular mechanisms of selective autophagy of various organelles and protein aggregates.