ERC Superior Grant Helps Research Ubiquitin in DNA Restore and Genome Stability
Professor Helle Ulrich, Govt Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) and Professor at Johannes Gutenberg College Mainz (JGU), has been awarded an Superior Grant from the European Analysis Council (ERC). She’s going to obtain €2.5 million over the following 5 years to assist her analysis into how a small regulatory protein known as ubiquitin contributes to DNA restore and genome stability. ERC Superior Grants are among the many best and prestigious grants awarded to main scientists in Europe.
Ulrich’s crew focuses on understanding how cells restore DNA harm attributable to genotoxic brokers, corresponding to ultraviolet radiation or mutagenic chemical substances, and making certain that DNA is replicated precisely when a cell divides. That is essential to stopping mutations that may trigger ageing and most cancers. The ERC Superior Grant will enable her to research how a small, extremely conserved regulatory protein known as ubiquitin contributes to DNA replication and restore. Ubiquitin is a post-translational modifier that binds to many proteins, together with key proteins in DNA replication and restore pathways, and regulates their interactions, stability, and actions within the cell.
Our challenge depends on a robust know-how we lately developed in our lab to control the binding of ubiquitin to proteins in cells and their focusing on. By directing the binding of ubiquitin to a related goal protein, corresponding to a DNA restore issue, we will monitor its results in isolation from different mobile processes and thus achieve a deeper mechanistic understanding of its operate.
Professor Helle Ulrich, Govt Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) and Professor at Johannes Gutenberg College Mainz
Utilizing this new approach, Professor Helle Ulrich and her group hope to decipher how cells are directed to copy DNA and completely different restore pathways, in addition to how regulation will be dysregulated in illness.
ERC Superior Grants are awarded to excellent researchers to allow them to work on initiatives which are thought-about extremely speculative as a result of their modern method, however due to this, can open entry to new approaches within the related area of analysis. Solely researchers who’ve already achieved vital achievements and have labored efficiently for not less than ten years on the highest ranges of worldwide analysis are eligible for the scholarship. The one standards considered when awarding ERC funding are the tutorial excellence of the researcher in query and the character of his or her analysis challenge. The ERC Superior Scholarship subsequently represents essential recognition of the recipient’s particular person achievements.
