Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Immunology Seminar Series”C-typelectins in infection and immunity”Prof. Teunis B.H. Geijtenbeek, University of Amster-dam. Mon, Oct 3rd 15:00 – 16:00, Segerfalksalen Host: Thorsten Joeris
“Visualizing the Brain” seminar Re-conceptualization, self-hood, desire and sexuality through neuroimaging. An international seminar at the Pufendorf institute, Biskopsg 3, Oct 7th 13:15-16:30
CHIP minisymposium“Omics in inflammation research and diagnostics”Oct 14th, Belfragesalen Register before Oct 5th with [email protected]
Forskningens dag - Andningen och livetWed Nov 2nd at 13:30 at SUS, LundThe event is free of charge. There is no need to sign up.
Nominate candidates for the 2012 Nobel Prize If you have a permanent position as professor at the faculty you can nominate candidates in physiology or medicine. Ask [email protected] for forms. Deadline Jan 27th.
OH to support PhD studentsThe EMV board has unanimously decided to use sur-plus overhead money to support research group leaders in giving all current PhD students doktorandtjänst. “It feels great that the board and the supervisors have been so positive. EMV deserves recognition for listen-ing to and caring about the PhD students!” comments Madelene Dahlgren who presented the proposal to the board.
Supervisors NeededPlease consider becoming a diploma-essay supervisor for a T10 medical student (master level). Compensa-tion applies.
Research PositionsThe Swedish Heart and Lung Foundation funds a number of positions for researchers with “docent” com-petence; your research programme should be of high quality and ingenuity. Deadline: Oct 3rd.
ERC Starting Grants Support to excellent young researchers in all disciplines seeking to establish their own research group. Deadline Nov 9th.
Garamond Italic 10 pt
Newsletter for the Department of Experimental Medical Science. Editor: [email protected]
Info September
© Michiko Mori
An envelope that you are sending outside LU
needs a bar code [Swe: Streckkod] or a stamp.
Otherwise it’s not paid for,
and EMV gets a bill from the postal service.
/ The Department Office
Stepping Inside A Nobel Mind
Aaron Ciechanover was one of the Nobel Laureates in chemistry 2004. He was awarded the prize for his discoveries of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.Sept 8th he was a speaker at the faculty Excellence Semi-nar. He had lunch with the future faculty group and shared reflections from his career.
“There are numerous scientists that are better than nobel laureates. I’m embarrassed from time to time to think that I belong to a class of nobel laureates. I don’t feel like I’m as good as many of the scien-tists that I’m happy to meet these days. There is no secret to success; no recipe. Luck and timing are big elements.
However, if you look, you will see that in many cases excellent scientist came from excellent scien-tists, were trained by excellent scientists, and there’s a chain forming.
Mentorship is critically important. Here you do have a choice; Look around! Who is your men-tor? When I was starting my PhD I looked around for maybe fifteen potential advisors. I was both systematic and lucky. What I liked about my men-tor except his reputation was that the said `I have something novel´. I weighed it very carefully. His reputation combined with what he offered me and didn’t offer me attracted me. I did not want to walk down a paved road. I was independent and I had my own ideas. That’s good for you! To be able to say `this is my idea. I thought about it. I set up the system. Yes I needed help, but the idea was mine´.
I didn’t start my scientific career until the age of thirty. When I started my post doc I was the old-est person in the lab. I was 35! The youngsters in Harvey’ Lodish’s lab at MIT looked at me like I was an old archaic creature.
Afterwards I had offers in the United States, but I decided to go back to Israel. There are many reasons; my wife wanted to go back and I thought being in Israel I could have a better impact and not just drown in `the big American ocean´, but
why am I telling you this? I think one important notion is that you should never get stuck in what you don’t like to do. At important points in my life I’ve asked myself whether I’m happy or not. Little feelings of “this is not for me” bothered me so I amplified them to understand what made me unhappy.
People are always worrying about what other people are telling them and they find themselves trapped. Don’t let this happen to you. There is time to make changes, you have time, don’t worry about that. You can always catch up. I think this is the one lesson; If you are not happy with what you are doing, change.
Life is not about targets. Life is a collection of experiences and you are moving from one to another. You don’t want to achieve a target. You want to be fascinated with what you are doing. I’m still enjoying science tremendously. I have a lab. We are fifteen people and it’s the greatest enjoyment for me to sit with the students and analyze. Every experiment is a new experience. I never aimed any-where. I never aimed at Stockholm. It’s nuts to aim there and it’s nuts to aim at recognition. It’s better to convert you hobby into your profession so that someone pays you for your enjoyment. Is your target to have a Cell paper? Then what? Another Cell paper? Counting Cell papers is no fun, but enjoyment never stops. If you enjoy something tre-mendously you are destined to succeed, no doubt about it.
Many people in science are opportunistic. They will publish good papers, but they are not connect-ed to one another forming a story. One principle I learned from my mentor is to be like a dog: Once you have a bone in your mouth never open your mouth. Once you open your mouth the bone will fall. Hold on to it! It’s the secret of your identity, so think of that evolving story every step you take.
During my PhD studies I realized that I was on to something that had no paradigm in the literature. The subject of protein degradation was out of the mainstream of biology at that time. People were mesmerized of the flow from DNA to RNA to proteins and nobody cared about protein degrada-tion.
Sure, the Nobel committee is looking for novel discoveries. But there are people who were first in a game but ended up never pursuing it: Take the people who discovered the CAT scan, they wrote down the algorithm but never constructed a ma-chine. We had to wait for the Human genome to be unraveled to really understand the full scope of the ubiquitin system. At times Harvey tried to lure me away from ubiquitin, but I had a gut feeling that it was very important. Defend your identity in science. This will be important in the future. People will identify you and say yes `Maria did this and that´.
How many of you are graduate students? For post doctoral studies I think it’s important to leave Swe-den. I left Israel. Sweden is as small as Israel, and you want to be steeped in a new environment.”
It has long been clear how proteins are built up in the cell. But the opposite, how they are broken down, wasn’t as well studied.
The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway has a critical role in maintaining the homeostasis of cells. Ubiq-uitin-mediated protein degradation helps control a number of critical biochemical processes, includ-ing cell division, the repair of defects in DNA, and
gene transcription, the process in which genes use their coded instructions to manufacture a protein.
Ubiquitin is also believed to be involved in the development and progression of diseases such as cancer, muscular and neurological diseases, im-mune and inflammatory responses. Read more on www.nobelprize.org
Ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation
Afterwards the audience expressed how inspiring Aaron Ciechanover’s stories and advice had been.
Save the DateThe head of department is about to become dean and the deputy head of department is about to move to Malmö and Labmedicin. It is time for a great farewell firmafest!
Stora festsalen in the AF-building is booked on the evening of Dec 1st. Sign up here: http://tinyurl.com/5tty65s
Enough with Glögg - the tomte wants to have a proper party!HMS site & binder launched!
HMS is short Swedish for “health, environment and safety”. The new HMS site was just launched. An English verion will follow. Check it out and give any feedback to [email protected]
The HMS binder contains emer-gency routines and phone numbers, delegation documents, HMS min-utes, permits, lists of safety course attendants etc. The binder will be handed out to the research group leader/work environment resposible who should keep it updated and on hand.
Rye bran alkylresorcinols suppress adipocyte lipolysis and hormone-sensitive lipase activity explained:
Intake of whole grain products is suggested to protect against type 2 diabetes. Alkylresorcinols, a group of phenolic lipids present in the bran of rye and wheat, are one of several bioactive components in whole grain that could play a role in the protective effect of whole grain regarding diabetes risk. Alkylresor-cinols are absorbed in the human intestine and can be detected in plasma as well as in adipose tissue. Obese and insulin resistant states are characterized by dysfunctional adipose tissue, manifested as insuf-ficient trapping of fatty acids resulting in ectopic fat accumulation and lipotoxicity. We have investigated the effects of alkylresorcinols isolated from rye bran on adipocyte lipolysis and hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL) activity. Preincubation with alkylresorcinols over night suppressed catecholamine-stimulated lipolysis in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Furthermore, phos-phorylation of HSL, the major lipase responsible for stimulated lipolysis, and activation of protein kinase A, a key regulator of hormone sensitive lipase, was diminished after preincubation with alkylresorcinols, whereas hormone-sensitive lipase protein expression was unaltered. Alkylresorcinols were also shown to inhibit HSL activity in an in vitro assay. Our results suggest that a constant high intake of ARs, in the format of for example whole grain rye, could lead to a reduced lipolysis in vivo and hence lower levels of circulating free fatty acids.
Ulrika Andersson
PublicationsAutophagy is increased in laminin {alpha}2 chain deficient muscle and inhibition improves muscle mor-phology in a mouse model of MDC1A. Carmignac V, Svensson M, Körner Z, Elowsson L, Matsumura C, Gawlik K, Allamand V, Durbeej M. Hum Mol Genet. 2011 Sep 14. PMID:21920942
Rye bran alkylresorcinols suppress adipocyte lipoly-sis and hormone-sensitive lipase activity. Andersson U, Dey ES, Holm C, Degerman E. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2011 Sep 2. doi: 10.1002/mnfr.201100231. PMID:21887818
Prostaglandin D(2) induces contractions through activation of TP receptors in peripheral lung tis-sue from the guinea pig. Larsson AK, Hagfjärd A, Dahlén SE, Adner M. Eur J Pharmacol. 2011 Aug 19. PMID:21872585
Increased numbers of orexin/hypocretin neurons in a genetic rat depression model. Mikrouli E, Wörtwein G, Soylu R, Mathé AA, Petersén S. Neuropeptides. 2011 Aug 24. PMID:21871662
New topics in bradykinin research. Maurer M, Bader M, Bas M, Bossi F, Cicardi M, Cugno M, Howarth P, Kaplan A, Kojda G, Leeb-Lundberg F, Lötvall J, Mag-erl M. Allergy. 2011 Aug 22. doi: 10.1111/j.1398-9995.2011.02686.x. PMID:21859431
Chloroplast thylakoids reduce glucose uptake and decrease intestinal macromolecular permeability.Montelius C, Gustafsson K, Weström B, Albertsson
PÅ, Emek SC, Rayner M, Erlanson-Albertsson C. Br J Nutr. 2011 Sep;106(6):836-44. Epub 2011 May 11. PMID:21736841
Copy Number Variation of the Gene NCF1 Is As-sociated with Rheumatoid Arthritis. Olsson LM, Nerstedt A, Lindqvist AK, Johansson AC, Medstrand P, Olofsson P, Holmdahl R. Antioxid Redox Signal. 2011 Aug 23. PMID:21728841
Size, structure and scaling relationships in glycogen from various sources investigated with asymmetrical flow field-flow fractionation and (1)H NMR. Fer-nandez C, Rojas CC, Nilsson L. Int J Biol Macromol. 2011 Nov 1;49(4):458-65. Epub 2011 May 27. PMID:21640751
Efficient induction of functional neurons from adult human fibroblasts. Pfisterer U, Wood J, Nihlberg K, Hallgren O, Bjermer L, Westergren-Thorsson G, Lind-vall O, Parmar M. Cell Cycle. 2011 Oct 1;10(19). PMID:21934358
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 biologi-cal variation and coreceptor use: from concept to clinical significance. Fenyö EM, Esbjörnsson J, Medstrand P, Jansson M. J Intern Med. 2011 Sep 19. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2796.2011.02455.x. PMID:21929694
Since Aug 1st with affiliation Dept of Experimental Medical Science
Meanwhile Merab Kokaia asks a question during NRC’s well-attended conference that came about with the help of EMV’s strategic means.
Phot
o: L
ine
Lund
fald
