FUTURA Issue
Table of Contents, Volume 25 (1), 2010
B.I.F. Internal
Wo steht der B.I.F. 2010?
Science
Working towards the Nobel PrizeInterview with James Ogle, a former B.I.F. fellow who contributed, with his dissertation, to the Nobel Prize awarded to his Ph.D. advisor, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Before Dr. James Ogle embarked on his academic career in molecular biology, he had seriously considered becoming a professional violinist. Much to the benefit of the scientific community, however, at the age of seventeen he changed plans and decided to become a scientist. James Ogle started his studies in Regensburg and then, supported by a fellowship from the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, joined Venki Ramakrishnan’s group in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) at Cambridge University. BIF met James Ogle in London on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry to his Ph.D. advisor.
Citation: (2010). Working towards the Nobel Prize. B.I.F. FUTURA 25(1), 5-7.
Copyright: © Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allow the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author, copyright holder and source are credited.
My home is my castle?
Microbes launching into eukaryotic host cells
Ulrich E. Schaible, Department of Molecular Infection Research, Leibniz Research Center Borstel, Borstel, Germany
Albert Haas, Institute for Cell Biology, University of Bonn, Germany
The essay deals with intracellular microbes that can cause severe and important infectious diseases in humans and animals such as tuberculosis, leprosy, typhoid fever, trachoma, malaria, Chagas diseases and leishmaniasis. Those microbes are the cause of significant morbidity and mortality world-wide. Other intracellular microorganisms are not pathogens, but rather symbionts such as the nitrogen fixing rhizobiain leguminose plants. In June 2009, eminent cellular microbiologists, geneticists, cell biologists and parasitologists came together at the Leibniz-Research-Center Borstel near Hamburg to present and discuss data concerning all different types of intracellular life forms. This meeting was financially supported by the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds.
Citation: (2010). My home is my castle? Microbes launching into eukaryotic host cells. B.I.F. FUTURA 25(1), 8-12.
Copyright: © Ulrich Schaible, Albert Haas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allow the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author, copyright holder and source are credited.
Research Articles of B.I.F. Fellows (Results)
In these final accounts, B.I.F. fellowship holders present a brief summary of the research results and publications of their respective PhD projects.
CXCR7 controls chemokine-guided cell migration by ligand sequestration
Bijan Boldajipour
Institute of Cell Biology, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany
Learning and generalization of motor skills with common task structure
Daniel A. Braun
Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Stargazin modulates AMPA receptor antagonism
Barbara Cokic
Synaptic Receptor Trafficking Group, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany
Reversal of Rett Syndrome-like symptons in MeCP2-null mutant mice
Emanuela Giacometti
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA
Subunit-specific functions of the chromosomal passenger complex (CPC)
Ulf Klein
Department of Cell Biology, Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany
Mechanism of protein insertion into the mitochondrial outer membrane
Stephan Kutik
Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
Protein degradation from the mammalian endoplasmic reticulum
Britta Müller
Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA
LIMP-2 is the intracellular transporter of the lysosomal hydrolase β-glucocerebrosidase
Jenny Schröder
Biochemical Institute, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany
Genome organization of DNA replication timing and its link to chromatin and transcription
Michaela Schwaiger
Laboratory Propagation and Dynamics of Epigenetic States, Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland
The mechanism of DNA repair in heavily irradiated Deinococcus radiodurans
Dea Slade
INSERM U 571: Génétique Moléculaire Evolutive et Médicale Faculté de Médecine Necker-Enfants Malades, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France
Predictive learning of pain relief in fruit flies
Ayse Yarali
Institute of Neurobiology and Genetics, Biocentre, University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany
Copyright: © These are open-access articles distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allow the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author, copyright holder and source are credited.
New Projects
The Board of Trustees of the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds meets three times a year to decide upon the allocation of PhD scholarships. At their meeting in Heidesheim from March 5 to 6, 2010, they discussed 51 applications – preselected from the original 177 applications sent to the foundation. Once again, the limited resources available meant that a considerable number of convincing applications had to be turned down. 18 fellowships holder were granted, and they were all taken up.
Generation of human cellular systems harboring artificial inducible telomeres
Catherine Brun
Institute of Biochemistry, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland
Writing and reading histone arginine methylation during transcriptional modulation
Fabio Casadio
Laboratory of Chromatin Biology, Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA
Characterization of the molecular mechanisms of piRNA biogenesis
Benjamin Czech
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA
Synthesis of defined poly-ubiquitin chains by ‘click-reaction’ between artificial amino acids
Silvia Eger
Research Group of Organic Chemistry, Cellular Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Constance, Constance, Germany
Defining the in-vivo role of the α4β1α4β7 integrin-fibronectin interaction
Katja Grgur
Department of Molecular Medicine, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany
The Fos-related Fra-2 protein in liver fibrosis and cancer
Sebastian Hasenfuss
Genes, Development and Disease Group, Cancer Cell Biology Programme, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas, Madrid, Spain
Analysis of dendritic spine plasticity with two-photon imaging and glutamate uncaging
Daniel Meyer
Department of Cellular and Systems Neurobiology, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany
Activation of the Mcm2-7 helicase function by ancillary replication factors GINS and Cdc45
Tatjana Petojevic
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Regulation of anaphase promoting complex in mouse meiosis
Ahmed Rattani
Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Regulation of organelle size and number by TOR kinase
Maria Rompf
Department of Biochemistry, University of Lausanne, Epalinges, Switzerland
Analysis of myelin membrane growth in oligodendrocytes
Sebastian Schmitt
Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology, Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine, Goettingen, Germany
Reward and punishment-mediating neurons for Drosophila visual memories
Christopher Schnaitmann
Research Group of Behavioral Genetics, Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany
Synaptic targeting of kainite receptors
Christoph Straub
Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology, School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Molecular mechanisms of early bacterial cell division
Piotr Swedziak
Department of Bacterial Cytoskeleton, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK