Dario Alessi and Miratul Muqit together with Stanford University researchers Suzanne Pfeffer and Monther Abu-Remaileh have been awarded a prestigious grant from the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) initiative to further understanding of how LRRK2 is linked to Parkinson’s disease. …more
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Tricia Cohen, co-founding Principal Investigator of the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit died from Lymphoma on August 2020. She was 76. …more
While SLS summer school students in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit usually expect to gain wet lab experience and benefit from working alongside PhD students and postdoctoral researchers on the bench, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on this year’s programme as access to the labs was restricted and placements cancelled. However, some students have completed remote projects, including Neringa Pratuseviciute, a 4th Year BSc(Hons) Neuroscience student from the University of Dundee. Before the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions came into place, Neringa had been looking forward to her summer placement in Esther Sammler’s lab. …more
In this new paper, published in eLife, a team of researchers led by Dr. Tom Deegan in Karim Labib’s lab have recapitulated the ubiquitylation and disassembly of the eukaryotic replisome in a test tube using over 50 purified proteins. Every time a cell divides, it must make a complete, new copy of every one of its 46 chromosomes, each of which consists of a single DNA molecule that contains an individual’s genetic blueprint. …more
We are delighted that Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck KGaA have pledged £7.5 million to allow the University of Dundee’s Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT) to continue its collaborative work.
The DSTT comprises 23 research teams at Dundee’s School of Life Sciences, 13 of which are based within the MRC PPU.
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The three-year alliance will allow knowledge, skills and technology sharing, as well as two joint postdoctoral positions, in order to accelerate discoveries on molecular metabolic signalling in control of glucose homeostasis …more
A joint effort from researchers in Dr. Satpal Virdee’s group at the University of Dundee and Prof. Michael Coleman’s group at the University of Cambridge has uncovered a potential new strategy for treating neurodegeneration. In cells the small protein ubiquitin acts as a molecular label directing the fate of the proteins that it is attached to. Ubiquitin is attached to substrate proteins by a group of enzymes known as E3 ligases. The Virdee group discovered how ubiquitin is transferred via the unusual RING-Cys-Relay (RCR) E3 ligase machinery present within the giant protein MYCBP2. …more
Congratulations to Ana Belen Perez Oliva on being awarded Spain's most prestigious JIN (Jovenes INvestigadores/Young Researchers) fellowship to establish an independent research programme at the University of Murcia.
Ana undertook postdoctoral research in the MRC PPU between 2011-2015 in Dario Alessi's lab, where she worked on deciphering the role of the USP45 deubiquitylase.
After leaving the MRC PPU, Ana led an independent research group in Janssen Pharma (Beerse, Belgium) to study lung cancer.
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Atul Kumar has recently been awarded Har-Gobind Khorana Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) of the Indian Government. This is one of India’s most prestigious awards given to early-career scientists pursuing frontier areas of biotechnology. Atul has also been awarded a DBT Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship. …more
The Sapkota lab developed the Affinity-directed PROtein Missile (AdPROM) system for targeted degradation of endogenous proteins inside cells. In principle, by deploying binders of specific proteins attached to destruction signals as “protein missiles”, any intracellular protein can be destroyed rapidly.
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