Miratul Muqit, a Wellcome Trust Clinical Investigator and PI based at the MRC-PPU has been selected for the prestigious European Molecular Biology Organisation Young Investigator Programme (EMBO YIP).
Every year EMBO go to great efforts to identify the brightest young Life Sciences researchers working in Europe, Israel, Turkey and Singapore and award them with an EMBO YIP Prize. In addition to the prestige, the EMBO YIP Prize also provides awardees with significant academic, practical and financial support to help them realise their potential as world-class researchers.
Miratul combines his cutting edge research into better understanding how mutations in the PINK1 protein kinase and the Parkin E3 ligase cause Parkinson’s disease with being a Consultant Neurologist treating patients with Parkinson’s and other movement disorders. In 2004 Miratul was a key member of the team that discovered that mutations in the PINK1 gene caused Parkinson’s whilst working as a PhD student with Nick Wood at the UCL Institute of Neurology. Miratul joined the MRC-PPU in 2008 to decipher the molecular mechanism by which the PINK1 kinase is regulated and to uncover its downstream functions. This has led to a series of significant discoveries that include showing that chemical agents, which, induce mitochondrial depolarisation stimulate PINK1 catalytic activity by an as yet unknown mechanism. He also found that PINK1 once activated phosphorylates both Parkin and ubiquitin at an analogous conserved residue termed Serine 65. Miratul’s work further demonstrated that PINK1-phosphorylated ubiquitin binds to Parkin promoting the phosphorylation of Parkin by PINK1 resulting in maximal Parkin activation. Recently Miratul has also discovered a new pathway by which PINK1 regulates the phosphorylation of a family of Rab GTPases, which is the focus of much current research in his laboratory.
Upon receiving news of the prize Miratul said, “I am absolutely delighted to be joining the EMBO YIP programme and engaging with researchers from all across Europe that will bring new ideas to enhance our research efforts. The award is a reflection of the many talented students and post-docs that have worked in my lab and also the outstanding research environment and world-class facilities at the MRC unit. It has also been a privilege to interact with wonderful colleagues and supportive mentors within the MRC unit and I am looking forward to unlocking further new knowledge on the PINK1 pathway. The future of clinical neurology research is to understand the signal transduction pathways that drive these diseases and the MRC-PPU is the perfect environment for Clinician Scientists like myself to tackle these challenging problems.”
Dario Alessi, Director of the MRC PPU was equally pleased by this award “This is fantastic recognition for the ground breaking work that Miratul and his lab are undertaking to better understand signaling components relevant to Parkinson’s disease such as the PINK1 kinase and Parkin E3 ligase. The work that Miratul has performed has made a huge contribution to the uncovering of the mechanism by which PINK1 recruits and activates Parkin at the surface of damaged mitochondria. In particular the finding that PINK1 phosphorylates both ubiquitin and parkin at an analogous Serine residue was totally unexpected and reveals one of the most striking examples of the interplay between phosphorylation and ubiquitylation known in biology. The research that Miratul has been able to perform is even more remarkable given that he is also a Clinician and spends a significant amount of his time away from the lab bench treating Parkinson’s patients. It is indeed very rare for a clinician to receive an EMBO-YIP award. Miratul is the sixth PI from the MRC-PPU to be selected for the EMBO Young Investigator Programme after Daan van Aalten (2002), Karim Labib (2004), John Rouse (2006), Helen Walden (2011) and Yogesh Kulathu (2015) previously receiving this honour. This is a great reflection of the strength and calibre of our Unit’s researchers.”