Professor Ernst Rank and the TUM-IAS team invite the scientists of TUM and their guests for coffee each Wednesday. Just come over to the TUM-IAS after lunch between 1:00–2:00 pm and have a coffee with us, meet other scientists and listen to a short talk (10-15 mins) on a recent major TUM publication or issue – aimed specifically at a non-expert audience.
On October 23, Prof. Dr. Kathrin Lang (Professorship for Synthetical Biochemistry) will talk about “Targeted Labelling of Proteins with Ubiquitin via an Expanded Genetic Code”. Human cells have a sophisticated regulatory system at their disposal. In a first, a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has succeeded in marking proteins with ubiquitin in a targeted manner, in test tubes as well as in living cells. Ubiquitin is a relatively small biomolecule which comprises a sequence of 76 amino acids. Its influence is far-reaching. Virtually every process is directly or indirectly affected by ubiquitin. That is why malfunctions of this labeling mechanism are associated with the development and progression of cancer and many other severe diseases. Kathrin Lang's team has now developed a method for attaching ubiquitin labels to targeted proteins. The procedure opens the door to exploring the inner workings of this vital regulatory system.
Relevant Publication
Site-specific ubiquitylation and SUMOylation using genetic-code expansion and sortase, Maximilian Fottner, Andreas-David Brunner, Verena Bittl, Daniel Horn-Ghetko, Alexander Jussupow , Ville R. I. Kaila, Anja Bremm and Kathrin Lang, Nature Chemical Biology, 15, 276–284 (2019) – DOI: 10.1038/s41589-019-0227-4.
Nature Chemical Biology, News & Views: Decoding without the cipher, Amit Kumar Singh Gautam, Andreas Matouschek, Nature Chemical Biology, 15, 210–212 (2019) – DOI: 10.1038/s41589-019-0230-9.
THE WEDNESDAY COFFEE TALKS AT THE TUM-IAS
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An overview on upcoming and past Wednesday Coffee Talks can be found at the Wednesday Coffee Talk Overview.