Many congratulations to Yogesh Kulathu who has been awarded a 2017 Lister Research Prize. This prestigious and highly sought-after prize is given annually by the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine to up to five young researchers in the UK. These awards are intended to help support and nurture future leaders of biomedical research.

Research in the Kulathu lab aims to understand how protein ubiquitylation regulates cellular homeostasis and function. An important function for the ubiquitin system is in the quality control and degradation of misfolded and damaged proteins. Failure to degrade proteins in a timely manner is an underlying cause of diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. The Lister Research Prize will enable Dr. Kulathu’s group to investigate the roles of FUBI, an unstudied ubiquitin-like modifier in the maintenance of a functional proteome.

“I am very happy to receive this award. This Lister Prize will allow my lab to pursue a completely new avenue of research” said Yogesh. “I also look forward to interacting and collaborating with Lister Fellows – past and present.”

Dario Alessi, the MRC PPU Director said “this is a fantastic and richly deserved accolade for Yogesh, that will provide him with a unique opportunity to embark on and use his expertise and talent to decipher an entirely new unexplored area of signal transduction. Yogesh is the first MRC PPU based investigator to receive this prestigious award and we are delighted at his achievement.”