The EMBL E-STAR Fellows
The 18 EMBL E-STARS come from 12 different countries, here you can learn about our backgrounds and what we're working on.
Silvia Badurek
| Programme: | Mouse Biology |  |
| Lab: | Liliana Minichiello - Signalling mechanisms and gene regulation in the nervous system. | |
| Location: | Monterotondo, Italy. | |
| Qualifications: | Diploma of Biology - specialisation in Genetics, University of Vienna. |
Project
Binding of neurotrophic factors to receptor tyrosine kinases (Trks) initiates multiple signalling pathways resulting in a change of expression of genes responsible for the regulation of neuronal differentiation, survival, and plasticity. In this way both the neurotrophic factors and their receptors are important for the development of the vertebrate nervous system as well as learning and memory processes. For my PhD thesis I am using conditional mutagenesis to remove TrkB kinase receptor from specific neuron subtypes of the mouse brain in order to study the specific functions of TrkB and the downstream signalling pathways in those neuron subtypes.
Meikel Diepholz
| Programme: | Structural & Computational Biology |  |
| Lab: | Bettina Böttcher | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | Diplom (MSc) in Biotechnology from the Technical University of Braunschweig. |
Project
Structural investigations of the V-ATPase
The vacuolar H+ translocating ATPase (V-ATPase) is membrane bound multi protein complex that works as ATP driven proton pump and acidifies the interior of numerous cell compartments. In my project I am investigating the overall structure and interactions of subunits of the V-ATPase from yeast vacuoles.
Malgosia Duszczyk
| Programme: | Structural & Computational Biology |  |
| Lab: | Michael Sattler - Biomolecular Nuclear Magnetic Resonance | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | Doctoraalexamen (MSc) in Chemistry at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, with practical work at the University of Oxford. |
Project
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance of RNA
Next to X-Ray crystallography NMR is the other main method that can produce molecular structures in atomic resolution. As RNA molecules are flexible, they are often difficult to crystallize. Moreover, RNA crystal structures are often affected by crystal packing forces. Solution structures, which can be determined through NMR are therefore particularly important in RNA structural biology as a complement to crystallography. NMR is also particularly suitable to study the dynamic behaviour of regions of higher conformational flexibility in nucleic acids, and their interactions with other biological macromolecules. My research focuses on the structure determination and functional characterisation of a non-coding RNA.
Andreia Feijao
| Programme: | Cell Biology |  |
| Lab: | Damian Brunner | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | Diploma in Chemistry, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa. |
Project
Fission yeast cells have a well defined cylindrical shape and it is known that the microtubule cytoskeleton play an important role in defining and maintaining this shape. Several proteins are important in controlling microtubule properties in the cell. I'm mainly interested in two of these proteins, mal3p and tip1p. Mal3p promotes general microtubule stabilization and growth, while tip1p seems to be responsible for the spatial control of microtubule dynamics. Both these proteins are phosphorylated, and we think phosphorylation could regulate their activity, localization and interaction with microtubules. My project is to understand the role of tip1p and mal3p phosphorylation.
Sylvain Gaudan
| Programme: | European Bioinformatics Institute |  |
| Lab: | Rebholz-Schuhmann | |
| Location: | Cambridge, United Kingdom | |
| Qualifications: | Software Engineer |
Project
My work consists of developing and applying linguistic methods to automatically extract information from biomedical publications. This involves the development of machine learning techniques and statistical methods to handle the complexity of the language and the properties of the biomedical terminology.
Philipp Gebhardt
| Programme: | Gene Expression |  |
| Lab: | Asifa Akhtar | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | Diploma in Biology, University of Tübingen. |
Project
Mechanisms of transcription regulation through chromatin
DNA tightly packed together with histones into nucleosomes is not easily accessible to the enzymes that use it as a template for transcription or replication. Consequently, remodeling of chromatin structure plays an essential role in regulation of gene expression. Structural changes in chromatin also form the basis for dosage compensation mechanisms that have evolved to equalise levels of X-linked gene products between males and females. In humans, one of the two X chromosomes in females is randomly inactivated by condensation of the chromosome into a Barr body, a process known as X-inactivation. In contrast, in Drosophila, equal expression of X-linked genes is achieved by a two-fold upregulation of X-chromosomal genes in males. The male-specific dosage compensation complex (DCC) involved in this process contains two non-coding RNAs and at least six proteins.The aim of my project is to characterise protein/protein interactions among different DCC member proteins as well as their functions.
Eoghan Harrington
| Programme: | Biocomputing |  |
| Lab: | Peer Bork | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | BA Human Genetics, Trinity College Dublin. | |
| MSc High Performance Computing, Trinity College Dublin. |
Project
Alternative Splicing is a is process which allows a single gene to produce many different transcripts. It is thought that the increased transcript diversity it generates and the additional level of regulation it provides contibute to organismal complexity. My project aims to use comparitive genomic approaches to investigate the different functions of alternative splicing in different organisms.
Johanna Hoog
| Programme: | Cell biology and Biophysics |  |
| Lab: | Claude Antony | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | BSc Cell and Molecular Biology (honours), Oxford Brookes University. |
Project
Fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) is a well studied system of polar growth and cell polarity. It has been found that cells deficient in microtubules or the polarity markers traveling on them to the cell tip have altered morphology. My project is to study the microtubule network 3D structure in these cells with the high resolution method electron tomography.
Cleopatra Kozlowski
| Programme: | Cell biology and Biophysics |  |
| Lab: | Francois Nedelec | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | BA Natural Sciences, Cambridge University. |
Project
Positoning of the mitotic pole spindle is a critical process for a cell, as it determines the developmental fates of its daughter cells. I am studying asymmetric spindle positioning in the first cell division of the nematode worm, C. elegans, using both computer simulations and experiments.
Erwan Lejeune
| Programme: | Gene Expression |  |
| Lab: | Andreas Ladurner | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | Biochemical Studies at University Rennes I. | |
| DEA biologie et Sante at University Rennes I. |
Project
I study the mechanisms establishing heterochromatin structures in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces Pombe. In order to identify new players of those mechanisms - that involve the RNAi machinery - I try to purify complexes using key proteins as bait.
Marzia Massimi
| Programme: | Mouse Biology |  |
| Lab: | Walter Wikte | |
| Location: | Monterotondo, Italy. | |
| Qualifications: | Laurea in Biologia, Universita' di Roma "Tor Vergata" |
Project
The actin cytoskeleton and its associated proteins control the dynamic shape changes observed in cell crawling, polarization, and cytokinesis. Profilins are evolutionary conserved actin binding proteins important for regulating actin polymerization. Profilins are found in complexes with actin and a large number of ligands, mainly poly-proline rich proteins. My project focuses on the analysis of profilin complexes and specifically the biochemical characterization of the profilin-CyFIP complex. I am also generating mice deficient for CyFIP1 and profilin knock-in mutants lacking either actin binding or poly-proline binding.
Jeanne Morinière
| Programme: | Structural Biology |  |
| Lab: | Christoph Mueller | |
| Location: | Grenoble, France. | |
| Qualifications: | Maitrise in biochemistry (Montpellier), DEA in structural biology, bioinformatic and genomic (Marseille). |
Project
In the nucleus, the genome is organized into compact chromatin and its accessibility to regulatory factors and enzymes is regulated by two categories of proteins: (i) histone modifying enzymes, and (ii) ATP dependent chromatin remodeling complexes. These latter ones are known to be involved in many different cellular processes such as transcriptional regulation, maintenance of chromosome structure and DNA replication. However, the way they proceed are mostly unknown. For exemple, the molecular interactions involved in nucleosome recognition remain to be characterized. We are focussing on CHRAC, an ATP dependent chromatin remodeling complex in order to obtain structural informations that would give a better understanding of chromatin remodeling mecanisms.
Lukas Neidhart
| Programme: | Developmental Biology |  |
| Lab: | Anne Ephrussi | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | Diploma of Biology, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. |
Project
Subcellular mRNA targeting is crucial in many different cell types. Localized transcripts can, for example, encode cell-fate determinants in developing embryo, or ensure high levels of cytoskeletal proteins at the leading edge of moving fibroblasts. In neurons, several mRNAs have also been found to be differentially distributed, and to specifically accumulate either in axons or in dendrites. I am using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism to study the in vivo relevance of neuronal RNA targeting, and the conservation of targeting machineries between different cell types.
Maxim Nekrasov
| Programme: | Gene Expression and Developmental Biology |  |
| Lab: | Juerg Mueller | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | Diploma in Biochemistry, Krasnoyarsk State University. | |
| Master of Science, Krasnoyarsk State University. | ||
| Specialisation in Molecular Biology, Moscow State University. |
Project
The aim of my PhD project will be to characterize the interaction between E(z) complexes and nucleosomes. The first goal of my project has been to test whether recombinant E(z) subcomplexes bind to nucleosomes in bandshift assays and to see whether there is a correlation between the ability to bind nucleosomes and the observed methyltransferase activity of the complex. We thus hope to get a handle to identify the nucleosome-binding protein modules in E(z) complex components.
Matthieu Pichaud
| Programme: | Biocomputing |  |
| Lab: | Rob Russell | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | Diplome d'Ingenieur Ecole Centrale Paris. | |
| DEA AMIB Universite Evry. |
Project
The structure of a protein complex provides valuable information to understand its function. Using complexes of known structure, it is possible to derive rules about how proteins interact. My project is to computationally find use those rules to predict the structure of a unknown protein complex.
Silvia Santos
| Programme: | Cell Biology and Biophysics |  |
| Lab: | Phillipe Bastiaens | |
| Location: | Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | Degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology University of Glasgow, Scotland. |
Project
Mitogen Activated Protein Kinases (MAPK) lie in the heart of cellular responses such as cell growth and division, differentiation and cell death. We are interested in understanding how an extremely conserved cascade of kinases can give rise to specific cell fates. We are using a Systems Biology approach combining mathematical models with experimental work to reveal how different cellular responses (division and differentiation) are achieved in out model - the PC-12 cells.
Elena Seiradake
| Programme: | Structural Biology |  |
| Lab: | Stephen Cusack | |
| Location: | Grenoble, France | |
| Qualifications: | Diploma of Biology, University of Konstanz. |
Project
My thesis focuses on the structural analysis of adenovirus proteins implicated in host-cell interactions. Current projects include the expression, purification, crystallization and structure determination of adenovirus fiber head domains in complex with their receptors, as well as non-structural viral proteins involved in regulation of expression of viral mRNAs.
Simone Weyand
| Programme: | Structural Biology |  |
| Lab: | Manfred S. Weiss | |
| Location: | Hamburg, Germany | |
| Qualifications: | Diploma of Biology, University of Bremen. |
Project
My PhD deals with the structural analysis of membrane proteins of Deinococcus radiodurans R1 and of proteins involved in the lysine biosynthetic pathway of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The aim is to overexpress, purify and crystallize these proteins to be able to determine the structure by x-ray crystallography. In addition the co-crystallization of these targets with inhibitors, substrates or cofactors are included in my work as well.