News
-
The Dutch Research Council (NOW) awarded a 2 year Rubicon grant to Dr. Yannick Kok for his project DNA repair: wrong place, wrong time
-
Award Ceremony and Lectures Dr. Ernst Th. Jucker Preis 2019/2020 for Important Contributions to Cancer Research
-
The project of the MSRU “Human-Horse Interaction” was awarded the “Prize for Educational Innovations” ”from the Hans-Peter Frey Foundation
-
Kaivalya Walavalkar received the prestigious EMBO postdoctoral fellowship
-
Scott Finlay PhD and Salim Darwiche PhD awarded first prize for best investor pitch, presenting their marketable product for cartilage repair
-
Congratulations to SNSF Prof. Dr. Matthias Altmeyer for being appointed Associate Professor
-
Congratulations to Prof.em. Dr. Brigitte von Rechenberg for obtaining ORS 2020 Women’s Leadership Forum Award
-
Stephanie Lüthi receives semester price 2019 from VSF
-
Prof. Dr. Tuncay Baubec receives ERC Consolidator Grant
-
Ramon Pfändler receives semester price from MNF
-
Nina Schmolka receives SNF Ambizione Fellowship
-
New paper from group M. Altmeyer online in EMBO journal
-
Molecular biologist Tuncay Baubec received the renowned Georg Friedrich Götz Award
-
Preisgekrönte Nachwuchsforschung
-
Verlängerung SNF Förderungsprofessur von Prof. Dr. Tuncay Baubec
-
Erfolgsmeldung aus dem Department of Molecular Mechanisms of Disease
-
Proteinveränderungen weisen auf Krebs hin
-
Mass spectrometry method provides first view of stress-induced extracellular protein modification in cells and tissues
-
Tumor Therapy of the Future
-
Measuring the Effects of Drugs on Cancer Cells
-
Prolongation of SNSF Professorship for Prof. Dr. Matthias Altmeyer
-
Raffaella Santoro received the prestigious ERC advanced grant
-
Article in UZH Magazin about Matthias Altmeyer on his work "Krebszellen im Burnout"
-
Successful and stimulating 3rd Joint Department Colloquium (JDC) of the DMMD
-
Important Mechanism of Epigenetic Gene Regulation Identified
How can defective gene activity, which can ultimately lead to cancer, be avoided? Researchers at the University of Zurich have now identified a mechanism how cells pass on the regulation of genetic information through epigenetic modifications. These insights open the door to new approaches for future cancer treatments.
-
UZH press release on the work of Santoro and Cinelli groups on stem cell pluripotency in Nature Cell Biology
Naive pluripotency is established in preimplantation epiblast. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) represent the immortalization of naive pluripotency. 2i culture has optimized this state, leading to a gene signature and DNA hypomethylation closely comparable to preimplantation epiblast, the developmental ground state. The groups of Raffaella Santoro and Paolo Cinelli discovered that Pramel7 (PRAME-like 7), a protein highly expressed in the inner cell mass (ICM) but expressed at low levels in ESCs, targets for proteasomal degradation UHRF1, a key factor for DNA methylation maintenance. The results revealed that increasing Pramel7 expression in serum-cultured ESCs was sufficinet to promote a preimplantation epiblast-like gene signature, to reduce UHRF1 levels and to cause global DNA hypomethylation. Remarkably, Pramel7 is required for blastocyst formation and its forced expression locks ESCs in pluripotency. Pramel7/UHRF1 expression is mutually exclusive in ICMs whereas Pramel7-knockout embryos express high levels of UHRF1. The data reveal an as-yet-unappreciated dynamic nature of DNA methylation through proteasome pathways and offer insights that might help to improve ESC culture to reproduce in vitro the in vivo ground-state pluripotency.
-
Professorial appointment process successfully completed
The Vetsuisse Council and the University of Zurich have appointed Dr. Francisco Verdeguer at the Department of Molecular Mechanisms of Disease (Board Prof. Michael O. Hottiger), as Assistant Professor for ‘Metabolism Regulated eRpigentetics’, as of February 1st 2017.
We send a very warm welcome to our new colleague and we are looking forward to the collaboration with him. -
SNF Prof. Dr. Matthias Altmeyer receives highly prestigious ERC Starting Grant
We would like to congratulate SNF Prof. Dr. Matthias Altmeyer for receiving a highly prestigious ERC Starting Grant funded at 1.5 Mio EUR for the project "Decoding cell-to-cell variation in genome integrity maintenance". He is one of only 2 awardees at UZH, and the only one in the Life Sciences.
-
Dr. Francisco Verdeguer new group leader at DMMD
Dr. Francisco Verdeguer has been appointed as a new group leader at the DMMD in the area of Metaboloepigenetics as of 15. September 2016. His research is focused on the interaction of the metabolism and basic epigenetic regulation in the context of thermogenesis and obesity.
-
Prof. Dr. Raffaella Santoro elected as new EMBO member
On May 23, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) has announced the election of Raffaella Santoro, group leader at the DMMD, as a new member. She is one of 58 newly appointed "leading life scientists". New EMBO Members are elected annually in recognition of their contributions to scientific excellence. Their selection is a tribute to their research and achievements.
-
Dr. Sandra Frommel from the Santoro group receives Jahrespreis of the Vetsuisse Faculty
We congratulate Sandra Frommel for receiving the Jahrespreis 2016 of the Vetsuisse Faculty for her Dissertation «TIP5 is a Critical Epigenetic Regulator of Aggressive Prostate Cancer». Well done!
-
Group van Loon publishes on the impact of ribonucleotide incorporation on DNA base excision repair in Nature Communications
Oxidative stress is a frequent source of DNA damage. Apart from deoxyribonucleotides (dNMPs), cellular DNA polymerases (Pols) also incorporate ribonucleotides (rNMPs) during DNA synthesis. However, whether and how oxidative stress-triggered DNA repair synthesis leads to genomic rNMPs incorporation has not been known so far.
In collaboration with the group of Prof. Giovanni Maga in Pavia, Italy, the van Loon group has now discovered that specialized base excision repair (BER) Pols can bypass oxidative DNA damage by incorporating both dNMPs, as well as rNMPs. Interestingly, the incorporation of rNMPs opposite oxidized DNA bases negatively affects subsequent BER repair.
-
Dr. Barbara van Loon appointed to Associate Professor position at the Norwegian University for Science and Technology
Dr. Barbara van Loon has been appointed to an Associate Professor position (Onsager fellow) at the Norwegian University for Science and Technology in Trondheim, starting her new position in March 2016. We would like to congratulate her for this achievement and wish her all the best for the new position and are looking forward to a continuing fruitful collaboration with her!
-
IVBMB is now Department of Molecular Mechanisms of Disease (DMMD)
As of 2016, the IVBMB has a new name to reflect its association with both the Vetsuisse and Science Faculty at the University of Zurich and its mission to elucidate molecular mechanisms leading to diseases: Department of Molecular Mechanisms of Disease (DMMD)
-
Group Hottiger publishes on identification of genome-wide chromatin ADP-riboslyation in Molecular Cell
When cells are exposed to stress, different repair and detoxification mechanisms are triggered to protect the cells from being damaged. Stress is caused either by environmental factors or the the body’s reaction to inflammation, and can lead to cancer or cardiovascular diseases. A study led by Prof. M.O. Hottiger in collaboration with the Baubec group and published on February 4, 2016 in Molecular Cell now describes a new technique that allows studying a fundamental response to stress in much more detail than previously possible: the ADP-ribosylation of chromatin.
The new technique will allow more closely investigating where and how ADP-ribosylation of the chromatin regulates its structure and chromatin-associated processes such as DNA replication, DNA repair or transcription. This will help identifying the molecular signaling pathways that play a central role in cellular stress response and potentially to the development of novel therapeutic strategies against cancer and other inflammation-associated diseases.
-
Group Altmeyer publishes on intracellular phase separation in Nature Communications
Compartmentalization is key to sub-divide the intracellular environment and orchestrate biochemical reactions in space and time. How compartmentalization is achieved is incompletely understood, in particular when it occurs without membranes as physical barriers.
In collaboration with the group of Prof. Jiri Lukas in Copenhagen, Denmark, the Altmeyer lab recently discovered that, in response to DNA damage, membrane-less compartmentalization is achieved by the regulated phase separation of intrinsically disordered proteins. This liquid demixing is initiated by poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR), a nucleic acid-like polymer that is induced at DNA break sites and acts as nucleation event for the rapid and reversible assembly of various unstructured, aggregation-prone proteins. The dynamic compartmentalization through PAR-seeded liquid demixing orchestrates the recruitment kinetics of repair proteins and shields the broken DNA from unwanted reactions.
The study, which was published on August 19, 2015 in Nature Communications, suggests that PAR-seeded liquid demixing is a general mechanism to dynamically reorganize the soluble nuclear space. In light of the aggregation-prone nature of the PAR-responsive intrinsically disordered proteins, deregulation of PAR-seeded liquid demixing may have important implications for pathological protein aggregation during neurodegeneration and aging.
-
IVBMB now also associated with Faculty of Science (MNF)
The Institute of Veterinary Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IVBMB), a preclinical institute of the Vetsuisse Faculty (VSF) Zurich is now also fully associated with the Faculty of Science (MNF). This new status as Doppelinstitut (VSF/MNF) will allow the IVBMB to further advance its mission to elucidate the molecular mechanisms leading to diseases, to lay the foundation for novel therapies and to offer a comprehensive and modern teaching program to students at all levels.
-
Dr. Tuncay Baubec awarded SNF-professorship to be carried out at the IVBMB
We are proud to announce that Dr. Tuncay Baubec, presently at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) in Basel, is starting his own research group at the IVBMB on 1. June 2015 on an SNF-professorship. He will be working on the project ”Epigenomic patterns: generation, interpretation and their role in regulating genome function".
-
Group Santoro awarded for Cell Stem Cell Cover Page
Santoro's Lab has been awarded for the cover of Cell Stem Cell (issue 15/6, 2014) describing the results of their recent work lncRNA Maturation to Initiate Heterochromatin Formation in the Nucleolus Is Required for Exit from Pluripotency in ESCs Savić et al.
-
Group Santoro publishes major study on predictive marker of prostate cancer recurrence in Nature Genetics
A new epigenetic mechanism involved in prostate cancer has been published in Nature Genetics on Dec. 8, 2014. BAZ2A (TIP5) influences the epigenetic characteristics of tumour cells and is directly linked to grade of malignancy of prostate cancer. The detection of this novel biomarker may serve as an indicator of the likelihood that the disease may take an aggressive course, and may thus be helpful in choosing an appropriate treatment. This key discovery has been produced in collaboration between the Santoro lab (University of Zurich) and the labs of Christoph Plass and Roland Eils (DKFZ). The published work was part of the PhD thesis of Sandra Frommel (UZH, Santoro lab), who shares first authorship with Lei Gu and Christopher C. Oakes (DKFZ) and Ronald Simon (University Hamburg).
-
Dr. Matthias Altmeyer awarded SNF-professorship to be carried out at the IVBMB
We are proud to announce that Dr. Matthias Altmeyer, presently at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, is starting his own research group at the IVBMB on 1. October 2014 on an SNF-professorship. He will be working on the project ”Uncovering concealed regulators and unexpected pathway connections guarding against genome instability".
-
Prof. Michael O. Hottiger new acting director of IVBMB as of 1. February 2014
The IVBMB has a new director. As of 1. February 2014, Michael O. Hottiger, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, follows Prof. Ulrich Hübscher, who recently retired.