News from the Institute

In collaboration with Katrin Rittinger at the MRC-NIMR in London, the Dikic group solved another molecular puzzle about the formation of specific Ubiquitin chains. In the current issue of Nature, they report the crystal structure of the catalytic core of HOIP, the critical enzymes involved in forming linear (Met1-linked) Ubiquitin chains. These chains are important regulators of cellular signalling, and knowing the molecular structure of the complexes involved is an important step forward to understanding how these pathways control innate immunity and inflammation.

In its recent issue, Laborjournal (LJ) publishes a citation analysis in the field of cell biology covering the period from 2007 to 2010. Instead of asking the mirror, LJ searched the database "Web of Science" for authors based in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Amongst the Top 5: IBC2 director Ivan Dikic with 1886 citations of 35 articles. One article from the Dikic lab made it under the Top 10 of most cited articles: the report about a role for the protein NBR1 in autophagy , published by Kirkin and collaborators 2009 in the journal Molecular Cell.

It took years to develop, and the input of scientists from five countries: BLESS, a novel technology for mapping DNA breaks by next generation sequencing. The resulting publication in Nature Methods by Crosetto, Dikic, Rowicka, and many colleagues is now featured by Laborjournal.

The LOEWE program Ubiquitin-Networks is a newly established interdisciplinary research network at the Goethe University which is led by Ivan Dikic.
The network recently received funding and is looking to recruit 1 Junior Group Leader, 1 Postdoc, and 12 PhD students. Deadline for applications is 7th November.

The IBCII welcomes Dr. Andreas Ernst from University of Toronto as independent group leader.
The research of his newly established protein engineering group is focussed on generating intracellular tools to study various signaling pathways.