Sir Philip Cohen received a Lifetime Achievement Award at Scotland’s Life Sciences annual Dinner and Awards Ceremony on the evening of March 16th 2023.

The event took place at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and saw awards bestowed across a series of categories recognising achievements in skills development, innovation, investment, innovative collaboration, and business leadership.

Thomas Williams, a PDRA in the Rousseau group of the MRC PPU has been awarded the Brian Cox for excellence in public engagement engaged researcher award. This award is awarded to a researcher who has made an outstanding contribution in communicating science performed within the University of Dundee School of Life Sciences.

Thomas Williams from the Rousseau group of the MRC PPU have been awarded the University of Dundee Molecular and Cellular Biology prize for unravelling a mechanism underpinning increased translation of proteasome assembly chaperones followed stress. The judges were impressed by this work and were particularly drawn to the diverse toolkit of molecular and cellular techniques (including genetic screening and high-resolution microscopy) that Tom used to uncover this fundamental stress response pathway, previously highlighted in the PPU news and published in Nature Cell Biology.

Ana Cuenda, who carried out postdoctoral research in the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit at the University of Dundee from 1994 to 1999 has had a street in Spain named after her (named Calle Ana Cuenda). 

Phosphorylation is a reversible post-translational modification bestowed on proteins, by which phosphate is added or removed from protein substrates. Reversible phosphorylation is capable of regulating proteins in virtually every conceivable way. From activating or inhibiting the function of the protein substrate, to promoting a change in its subcellular localisation, phosphorylation plays a vital aspect of cell physiology. The proper regulation of this reversible process is key for cell viability, and many diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative pathologies arise because of dysfunctional phospho-control.

Researchers have uncovered multiple phosphorylation sites in the protein Shp1/p47 that are altered in response to cell stress. This finding could be important for understanding the regulation of cellular quality control pathways linked to diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. The new study, now published in the journal Life Science Alliance, was performed by Adrien Rousseau’s lab in the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation & Ubiquitylation Unit (MRC PPU) at University of Dundee, UK.

Dario Alessi has been named as the winner of the 2023 Jeantet-Collen Prize for Translational Medicine. The award is given by the Louis-Jeantet Foundation.  

We are delighted to announce that our latest MRC PPU group leader, Chiara Maniaci, has now opened her laboratory.  

Chiara completed her PhD in Chemical Sciences in 2017 at the School of Life Sciences Dundee and in January 2018 joined the research groups of Professor Chris Schofield and Professor Akane Kawamura at University of Oxford to investigate new molecular mechanisms of epigenetic processes. In February 2020, Chiara was awarded a BBSRC Discovery Fellowship and moved to Newcastle University shortly after, where she started here independent career working on protein post-translational modifications.   

Tom Williams, who has been working as a postdoctoral researcher in Adrien Rousseau’s group since 2019 has been awarded the British Society for Cell Biology (BSCB) postdoctoral researcher medal for 2023. This prestigious award is awarded based on scientific excellence, research independence, and community engagement and leadership.