"In science, you can’t get bored"
Irma Querques studied Biotechnology at the University of Bologna and received a PhD at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. Before joining the Max Perutz Labs in 2023, she worked in the lab of Martin Jinek at the University of Zurich as a postdoctoral fellow, studying CRISPR-guided transposons. We talked to her about the medical potential of her research on transposons, what science has to do with a good TV series, and how she gave up her dream of becoming a book author to tell stories about how molecular processes work.
START grant for Stephanie Ellis
Congratulations to Stephanie Ellis, who has been awarded a START grant totaling € 1.05 million by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. Together with the Wittgenstein Award, the FWF START grant is one of the most prestigious and highly endowed scientific awards in Austria. The funding will support Stephanie’s work on cell competition over the next five years.
Many roads lead to Rome
Cilia are hair-like projections on the surface of eukaryotic cells that perform essential sensory and motile functions. Defects in cilia are associated with a wide range of human diseases, collectively known as ciliopathies. In work recently published in The EMBO Journal, the lab of Alex Dammermann has identified the core set of genes associated with cilium biogenesis and function, which includes an additional 152 previously uncharacterized genes. The authors’ compendium of ciliogenesis factors provides an invaluable inventory for the further investigation of this important cellular organelle.
€1.2 million in grants awarded to Max Perutz Labs scientists
Thomas Leonard, Shotaro Otsuka, and Gijs Versteeg have been awarded individual project grants, amounting to approximately €400.000 each, by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. The scientists’ projects will deal with kinases involved in neurodevelopmental disease, the regulation of viral restriction factors, and intra-cellular communication. Congratulations!
Alwin Köhler named a Moore Distinguished Scholar at Caltech
Scientific Director Alwin Köhler has been selected by the California Institute of Technology for its prestigious Moore Distinguished Scholar Program. The scholarship was established in 2000 by Gordon Moore and his wife Betty. Moore, a pioneer of the modern electronics industry and a philanthropist, was cofounder of Intel and instrumental in establishing Silicon Valley.
HFSP grant awarded to Kristina Djinovic and Jonas Ries
The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) has awarded a research grant amounting to €1.5 million over the next three years to Kristina Djinovic-Carugo, incoming group leader Jonas Ries, and scientists from the University of Connecticut (USA) and the University of Yamanashi (Japan). The project team will combine their expertise to understand the role of liquid-liquid phase separation in the biogenesis of the complex protein assemblies found in striated muscle.
Keeping the immune system in check
Tristetraprolin (TTP) is an important regulator of the innate immune system that modulates the inflammatory response. How TTP is regulated, however, is poorly understood. In new work published in eLife, the lab of Gijs Versteeg has gained insight into how this critical immune regulator is kept in check. The team, which includes the labs of Pavel Kovarik (Max Perutz Labs), Tim Clausen and Johannes Zuber (Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, IMP), identified the ubiquitin E3 ligase HUWE1 as an important factor that controls the degradation of TTP.
Elucidating the mechanism behind the medicine
The precursor of UCB0599, a potential drug to treat Parkinson’s disease, has been shown to reduce aggregation of the protein alpha synuclein in mice. Although currently being evaluated in a phase 2 clinical trial in human patients, UCB0599’s mode of action is unknown. The lab of Robert Konrat has determined high-resolution structures of membrane-bound alpha synuclein. Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal a putative mechanism by which UCB0599 interferes with pathogenic protein aggregates.
Win some – lose some: how cells adapt to aneuploidy
An abnormal number of chromosomes, known as aneuploidy, is a common feature of many human cancers. Most cancer types harbor specific patterns of these chromosomal abnormalities, but why certain chromosomes are selected for gain or loss while others are not is poorly understood. In work published in Genes & Development, the lab of Christopher Campbell has now managed to recapitulate some of the aneuploidy patterns seen in cancer cells in the lab. They were able to identify specific genes that are responsible for the selection of certain aneuploidies for the first time in human cells.
Learning from viruses
Marco Hein obtained his PhD under the supervision of Matthias Mann at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (Germany), where he used proteomics to map the human interactome. Working as an EMBO postdoctoral fellow with Jonathan Weissman at the University of California, San Francisco (USA), he became interested in virus-host interactions. Marco joined the Max Perutz Labs from the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (USA), where he was a research fellow. We talked with him about the excitement of discovering something new and what we can learn from viruses about our cells and from viral pandemics about science.
Embryos gaining independence
After fertilization, the genome of the embryo is transcriptionally inactive and maternally deposited RNA and proteins perform cellular functions. During a process called maternal-to-zygotic transition (MZT) the zygotes’ own transcriptional program is activated and maternal transcripts are cleared. The labs of Stefan Ameres (Max Perutz Labs, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, IMBA) and Andrea Pauli (Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, IMP) have developed a method that allowed the scientists to gain detailed insights into the organization of gene expression during this first major developmental transition in the life of vertebrates. Their findings have now been published in Cell Reports.
Do it yourself – kinase activation revisited
The transmission of information in cells often involves the modification of proteins by the addition of phosphate groups, a process termed phosphorylation. Phosphorylation is catalyzed by protein kinases, which themselves often require phosphorylation for their activation. Some kinases auto-activate by phosphorylating their own activation loop, a process that is usually accomplished by a second copy of the same protein. In work published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the lab of Thomas Leonard has discovered, unexpectedly, that protein kinase D (PKD) activates itself without the need for another copy of PKD.
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