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Editorial Board
Chair of the Editorial Board
Professor Mark Lemmon
Affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, and Cancer Biology Institute, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
Keywords: epidermal growth factor receptor, protein structure, receptors, cancer, membranes, endocytosis, crystallography, phosphoinositides, phosphorylation
Subject Areas: Signalling Pathways and Processes
Associate Editors
Dario Alessi
Affiliation: MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit, School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee
Keywords: extracellular signal-regulated kinases, insulin signalling protein tyrosine phosphatases inositol polyphosphates inositide signalling, mitogen-activated protein kinase 8
Subject Area: Signalling
Biography: Dario’s research focuses on unravelling the roles of poorly characterised components which regulate protein phosphorylation or ubiquitylation pathways that are linked to human disease. Dario obtained a BSc (1988) and PhD (1991) from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. He carried out postdoctoral at the University of Dundee from (1991 to 1997), where he became fascinated by protein kinases and how they are regulated by insulin, growth factors and other extracellular signals that control almost all aspects of cell biology. In 1997 Dario became a program leader in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit, where he was appointed as ts Director in 2012. Dario has contributed to our understanding of several disease relevant signal transduction pathways including PDK1 (diabetes and cancer), LKB1 (cancer), WNKs (blood pressure). Much of Dario’s current work is focused on understanding LRRK2 and how mutations in this enzyme cause Parkinson’s disease. Dario’s work has contributed to approaches (LRRK2 kinase assay, LRRK2 Ser935 dephosphorylation assay, Rab phosphorylation assays) that have facilitated the development of inhibitors against LRRK2 that may be useful for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Dario’s lab contributed to the discovery and validation of the first physiological substrates for the Parkinson’s disease LRRK2 protein kinase to be identified showing that LRRK2 directly phosphorylates a subset of the Rab GTPases on a residue lying within the middle of the effector interacting-switch II domain. Dario in collaboration with the Michael J Fox Foundation to better interrogate and understand LRRK2 biology and how it is impacted by mutations, environment and inhibitors that are being developed and assessed. Dario also serves as the Director of the Dundee Signal Transduction Therapy Unit. This is a unique collaboration between scientists at the University of Dundee and pharmaceutical companies, dedicated to accelerating the development of specific inhibitors and chemical probes that target the protein phosphorylation and ubiquitylation system for the treatment of disease, as well as for the study of cell signalling. Dario has published around 260 papers and has a h-index of 129.
Jonathan Backer
Affiliation: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA
Keywords: signal transduction, PI 3-kinase, cancer, metastasis, motility, vesicular trafficking
Subject area: Signalling Pathways and Processes
Biography: Jon Backer received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1987, where he worked with Paulo Dice on what is now called chaperone-mediated autophagy, and with Lennie Dawidowicz on lipid trafficking. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Morris White and Ron Kahn and the Joslin Diabetes Center, where he worked on insulin signaling and demonstrated that PI 3-kinase binds to and is activated by tyrosine phosphorylated IRS-1. He joined the Department of Molecular Pharmacology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1993, and he is currently the Williams S. Lasdon Professor and Chair of the department. His research has focused on the mechanisms of PI 3-kinase activation by growth factor receptors and GPCRs, and the role of PI 3-kinases in tumorigenesis, metastasis, vesicular trafficking, and metabolism.
Ben Black
Affiliation: Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Keywords: Chromatin structure, nucleosomes, histones, centromeres, kinetochores, hydrogen/deuterium exchange-mass spectrometry
Subject Areas: Gene Expression and Regulation
Xiao-Wei Chen
Affiliation: College for Future Technology, Peking University, Beijing, China
Keywords: Small GTPases, protein phosphorylation, vesicle transport, lipid metabolism, lipoproteins
Subject area: Cell signaling; lipid transport and metabolism
A. Clay Clark
Affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, USA
Keywords: Protein allostery, fluorescence emission, crystallography, enzymology, thermodynamic studies, apoptosis
Subject area: Molecular structure and function
Michael Duchen
Affiliation: Department of Physiology and Mitochondrial Biology Group, University College London, London, UK
Keywords: Mitochondria, calcium signalling, autophagy, fluorescence microscopy and imaging
Subject Area: Energy Processes
Biography: Michael was born in South Africa, moving to the UK in 1960. He studied Physiology and Medicine in Oxford, 1971-75, then moved to St George's Hospital Medical School to complete his clinical training, graduating 1978. He worked in clinical medicine in junior hospital appointments 1978-1981 including a period working at a rural hospital in the Transkei, South Africa. He moved to the UCL Department of Physiology to embark on PhD studies 1981-1984 with Tim Biscoe as supervisor and mentor. He has stayed at UCL Physiology (now the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology) ever since, first as a Royal Society University Research Fellow, then as Reader and Professor. His early research was electrophysiological with an interest in neurotransmitter receptor biology, but he became interested first in the influence of cell metabolism on excitability and then increasingly fascinated by mitochondrial biology, in the dialogue between cell signalling pathways and mitochondria, in the roles of mitochondria in disease and ultimately in the question of whether mitochondrial pathways represent viable therapeutic targets in a variety of disease states.
Patrick Eyers
Affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Systems Biology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
Keywords: Protein phosphorylation; kinase; phosphatase; pseudokinase; pseudoenzyme; redox regulation; cell cycle; cell signalling; phosphoproteomics; sulfation; desulfation; small molecule; inhibitor
Christine Foyer
Affiliation: Centre for Plant Sciences, School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, UK
Keywords: oxidation-reduction, antioxidants, mitochondria, chloroplasts, carbon metabolism, phytohormones
Subject Areas: Plant Biology; Energy Processes
Biography: Christine Foyer is Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Birmingham UK. She obtained her PhD in 1977 from Kings College, London. Christine held senior appointments at a number of leading Institutions in the UK and in Europe. Christine is member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Plant Biologists and President Elect of the Association of Applied Biologists. She is also a member of a number of Institutional Advisory Boards and is currently the Chair for the FWO grant review panel BIO1 in Belgium, and a Chair of one of the ERC Consolidator Grant Panels. Christine is a specialist in plant metabolism, particularly redox regulation and signalling. Christine is ranked within the top 1% most cited works (Web of Science) for the subject field and year of publication, earning a mark of Exceptional Impact.
Ilse Kranner
Affiliation: Department of Botany and Center for Molecular Biosciences Innsbruck (CMBI), University of Innsbruck, Austria
Keywords: antioxidants, liquid chromatography, plant metabolism, plant-microbe interactions, plant stress physiology, redox reactions
Subject area: Plant Biology
Biography: Ilse is Professor of Plant Physiology at the University of Innsbruck. She obtained her PhD in Biology from the University of Graz, Austria, specializing on Botany and Biochemistry, after which she won an elite APART grant by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, enabling her to work in several international labs. From 2002 to 2012 Ilse worked for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK, on the Millennium Seed Bank Project, the largest ex situ conservation project globally. She was then appointed full professor at the University of Innsbruck, where she headed the Department of Botany until 2021. Ilse serves as a Board member of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and was president of the Austrian Society of Plant Biology (ATSPB), representing Austria on the Council of the Federation of European Societies of Plant Biology (FESPB). With a main interest in plant stress physiology, Ilse’s lab applies targeted HPLC, LC-MS/MS and GC-MS to elucidate survival strategies of plants in extreme environments, including desiccation tolerant life-forms such as lichens and seeds. Ilse pioneered methods for the assessment of antioxidant redox state in plants, and based on the biomedical stress model of Seyle (1936) developed a novel stress model for plants.
Tatiana Kutateladze
Affiliation: University of Colorado School of Medicine, Anschutz Medical Campus, USA
Keywords: epigenetic and chromatin remodelling, signaling, posttranslational histone modifications
Subject area: Structural biology and Epigenetics
Biography: Tatiana received her Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the Moscow State University and completed her postdoctoral training in biochemistry and structural biology in the US. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Her research interests include studying epigenetic and chromatin remodeling signaling, posttranslational histone modifications and the role of epigenetic misregulations in human diseases. Tatiana’s laboratory applies high field NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography to obtain atomic-resolution structures of chromatin-binding proteins involved in transcriptional regulation and DNA damage repair. Among their major achievements, the Kutateladze’s lab is credited with determining molecular bases underlying methyllysine and acyllysine recognition by a large number of epigenetic readers.
Pilong Li
Affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Keywords: phase separation, phase transition, biomolecular condensate
Subject area: Biomolecular phase separation
Biography: Pilong Li received his BS in Biotechnology from Peking University, MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and his PhD in Molecular Biophysics at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. From 2010 to 2015 he undertook postdoctoral work at Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania. In 2016, he joined the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests focus on investigating the physiological and pathological roles of biomolecular phase separation.
James M Murphy
Affiliation: Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Keywords: structural biology, X-ray crystallography, SAXS, NMR, biophysics, proteins, enzymes, kinase, pseudokinase, pseudoenzyme, signal transduction, cell signalling, cytokine signaling, JAK kinases, cell death, necroptosis, programmed necrosis, MLKL, RIPK1, RIPK3
Subject area: Molecular structure and function; Signalling Pathways and Processes
Anabella Srebrow
Affiliation: Instituto de Fisiología, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Keywords: pre-mRNA processing, splicing, spliceosome, RNA, RNA-binding proteins, post-translational modifications, protein SUMOylation, SUMO conjugation pathway, signal transduction
Subject Areas: Gene Expression and Regulation
Gregory Steinberg
Affiliation: Department of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
Keywords: Fatty acids/acylglycerols, lLipid metabolism, mitochondria, oxidative phosphorylation, atherosclerosis/cardiovascular disease, diabetes
Subject Area: Metabolism
Cathy Tournier
Affiliation: University of Manchester, UK
Keywords: mitogen-activated protein kinases, gene expression, tumour biology
Subject Area: Mechanisms of Disease
Biography: Cathy Tournier was awarded a PhD in 1996 by the University of Paris XI in France for her work on the regulation of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) in astrocytes. She then trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Roger J Davis at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the USA, where she discovered that genetically modified mouse models constituted powerful tools to decipher cellular and molecular bases of biological processes. In July 2000, she was appointed as a lecturer in the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2012. Her research focuses on deciphering abnormal signal transduction via MAPKs in diseases.
Bart Vanhaesebroeck
Affiliation: University College London Cancer Institute, London, UK
Keywords: Signal transduction, PI 3-kinase, growth factors, oncology, drug development, cancer
Subject Area: Chemical Biology
Biography: Following a Ph.D. from the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Ghent University (Belgium), BV carried out postdoctoral studies at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at University College London (UCL). BV’s research focuses on PI 3-kinase (PI3K) enzymes, which are key regulators of cell signalling. PI3K signalling is often deregulated in cancer and is also important amongst other in immunity and metabolism. BV’s laboratory aims to understand the roles and mechanism of action of the PI3K family members and to explore their potential as drug targets for cancer and other diseases. BV’s team identified the PI3Kdelta isoform as a target in immunity, inflammation and haematological malignancies, which led to extensive efforts to create drug against PI3Kdelta. In 2014, a PI3Kdelta inhibitor (Idelalisib - Gilead) was approved for the treatment of specific blood cancers. Our recent discovery that inhibition of PI3Kdelta leads to immuno-stimulation in cancer (Nature 2014:510:407) potentially widens the use of PI3Kdelta inhibitors to cancer immunotherapy, a concept that is currently being tested in clinical trials. BV has been an Associate Editor of the Biochemical Journal since 2003. He is an elected member of EMBO and of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences.
Ming-Wei Wang
Affiliation: Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences/Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Keywords: Chemistry, bioactivity, drug screening
Subject area: Chemical Biology
Biography: Following medical practices in Shanghai, Dr. Ming-Wei Wang obtained his Ph.D. degree from University of Cambridge in 1989. He worked for a couple of US-based biotech companies a year later and served as a consultant to Merck and UNDP on China-related projects in the mid-1990’s. Thereafter, he was engaged in various entrepreneur activities. Dr. Wang joined the faculty of Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001 and became Director of the National Center for Drug Screening in 2003. In 2004, he was named by Shanghai Pudong New District Government as a Senior Business Advisor. He founded the Chinese National Compound Library and has been its first director since 2012. Dr. Wang was appointed as Dean, School of Pharmacy, Fudan University in 2015. His research achievements include discovery of a non-peptidic glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist Boc5 effective in vivo, determination of the 3-D structures of human glucagon receptor, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor, parathyroid hormone receptor-1 and growth hormone-releasing hormone receptor, elucidation of the insulinotrophic effect of insulin-like peptide 5 and identification of the link of GPR160 (an orphan GPCR) and prostate cancer.
Natasha Zachara
Affiliation: Departments of Biological Chemistry and Oncology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Maryland, MD, USA
Keywords: O-GlcNAc, signaling, glycome, O-GlcNAcome, glycosyltransferase, glycosidase, glycan, glycoscience
Subject Area: Glycobiology
Chiara Zurzolo
Affiliation: Trafic Membranaire et Pathogenèse, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
Keywords: Glycoproteins/glycolipids, Golgi, lysosomes, protein sorting, prion-like proteins, trafficking, targeting, secretion
Subject Area: Cell Biology
Biography: Professor Chiara Zurzolo MD, PhD is currently Director of the Membrane Trafficking and Pathogenesis Unit, and Director of the Department of Cell Biology and Infection at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, France. She earned a Medical Degree and a PhD at Naples University Federico II where she also specialized in Oncology. She spent 3 years as postdoc at the Cornell University Medical School in NYC, where she uncovered some of the mechanisms of apical protein sorting in polarized epithelial cells. In 1995 she became Assistant Professor in Cell and Molecular Biology at Naples University and in 2000 Associate Professor. In 2003 she joined the Pasteur Institute as group leader and in 2014 became Director of the Cell Biology Department. Her research interests are focused on understanding the role of protein trafficking in diseases in epithelial and neuronal cells. Currently part of her laboratory focuses on understanding how prions (and prion-like proteins underlying other neurodegenerative diseases) misfold inside the cells and how they spread from one cell to another. She discovered that tunnelling nanotubes (TNTs) allow the intercellular passage of prions, and she proposed that these structures are involved in the spreading of different neurodegenerative diseases in the brain. In 2015, Professor Zurzolo was elected an EMBO Member.
Editorial Board members
- Josephine Adams (University of Bristol, Bristol, UK)
- Hugo Armelin (University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil)
- James Bear (University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, USA)
- Lawrence Boise (Emory School of Medicine, Miami, USA)
- Jonathan Blank (Cambridge, USA)
- Juan Bolanos (University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain)
- Maria Bogoyevitch (University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia)
- Kakoli Bose (Tata Memorial Centre, Navi Mumbai, India)
- Sarah Bray (University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK)
- Stefan Broer (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)
- Paul Brookes (University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, USA)
- Robert Casero, Jr (The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA)
- Leonid Chernomordik (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA)
- Jianmin Cui (Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, USA)
- Victor Davidson (University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA)
- Michael Davies (University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark)
- Catherine Day (University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand)
- Lakshmi Devi (Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA)
- Jane Endicott (Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK)
- Fabienne Foufelle (UMRS 1138 INSERM, Paris, France)
- Christian Frezza (University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK)
- Mark Hampton (University of Otago Christchurch, Christchurch, New Zealand)
- Andrew Hanson (University of Florida, Gainesville, USA)
- Jeanne Hardy (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA)
- Phillip Hawkins (The Babraham Institute, Cambridge, UK)
- Peter Hedden (Rothamsted Research Institute, Harpenden, UK)
- Neil Hogg (Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA)
- Anne Imberty (CERMAV-CNRS, Grenoble, France)
- David Jans (Monash University, Monash, Australia)
- Joseph Jez (Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, USA)
- Kiaran Kirk (The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)
- Sunghoon Kim (Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea)
- Alicia Kowaltowski (University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil)
- Zachary Knight (University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, USA)
- Susan Lees-Miller (University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada)
- Steve Ley (University College London, UK)
- Martin Lowe (University of Manchester, Manchester, UK)
- Kristen Lynch (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA)
- Neil McDonald (The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK)
- Gerry Melino (Leicester University, Leicester, UK)
- Tony Miller (John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK)
- Greg Moorhead (University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada)
- Simon Morley (University of Sussex, Brighton, UK)
- Martina Muckenthaler (University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany)
- James Murphy (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Parkville, Australia)
- James Naismith (University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK)
- Angel Nebrada (Institute for Research in Biomedicine Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain)
- Wataru Ogawa (Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan)
- Masato Okada (Osaka University, Osaka, Japan)
- Klaus Okkenhaug (University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK)
- Robert Parton (The University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia)
- Bernard Payrastre (Inserm - Unite de recherche U1048, Toulouse, France)
- Dehua Pei (Ohio State University, Columbus, USA)
- William Plaxton (Queen's University, Kingston, Canada)
- Sreenivasan Ponnambalam (University of Leeds, Leeds, UK)
- Christopher Proud (South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, Adelaide, Australia)
- Barry Potter (University of Oxford, Oxford, UK)
- Quan-Sheng Qiu (Lanzhou University, China)
- Andrew Quest (University of Chile, Chile)
- Mary Roberts (Boston College, Boston, USA)
- Brad Rothberg (Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, USA)
- Paul Saftig (Christian Albrecht University Kiel, Kiel, Germany)
- Kei Sakamoto (University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark)
- Jose Sanchez-Ruiz (Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain)
- Karin Schumacher (University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany)
- Paul Schumacker (Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, USA)
- Louise Serpell (University of Sussex, Sussex, UK)
- Solange Serrano (Instituto Butantan, Sao Paulo, Brazil)
- Hitoshi Shimano (University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan)
- Jonathan Slack (University of Bath, Bath, UK)
- Dirk Snyders (University of Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium)
- W. Marshall Stark (University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK)
- Vincent Tagliabracci (UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, USA)
- Claire Thornton (King's College, London, UK)
- Kostas Tokatlidis (University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK)
- Claudia Tomes (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina)
- Helle Ulrich (Institute of Molecular Biology, Mainz, Germany)
- Sylvie Urbe (University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK)
- Michelle West (University of Sussex, Brighton, UK)
- Spencer Whitney (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)
- Donghai Wu (Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China)
- Ian Zachary (University College London, London, UK)