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In two new papers, scientists provide insight into the function of a protein called VPS13C, one of the molecular suspects that underlie Parkinson’s, a disease marked by uncontrollable movements including tremors, stiffness, and loss of balance.

Yale researchers across disciplines are using single cell technologies to profile various kinds of cells that exist together in both healthy and diseased organs and create the most detailed blueprints of diseases to date, as well as to better understand how various cells develop over time and interact with one another.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has provided $10 million to HHMI Investigators at Yale, an HHMI host institution. The funding supports collaborative research projects through the labs of some of the leading experts at the forefront of COVID-19 research.

New research from the De Camilli and Ferguson labs reveals a close relationship between the transport of lysosomes and cytoskeleton organization in neuronal axons through studies of human ipSC-derived neurons lacking JIP3/MAPK8IP3, a scaffold protein that is thought to link lysosomes to motors. These findings raise new questions about how the transport of cargos is coordinated with the structure and dynamics of multiple components of the axonal cytoskeleton. Answers to these questions may be relevant to human neurdevelopmental disease arising from mutations in the JIP3/MAPK8IP3 gene as well as for Alzheimer’s disease where lysosomes accumulate in axonal swellings at amyloid plaques.

Pietro De Camilli, professor of Neuroscience and Cell Biology at Yale University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, has been chosen by ASCB to receive the 2021 E.B. Wilson Medal. De Camilli is also the director of the Kavli Institute of Neuroscience at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Strittmatter succeeds Pietro De Camilli, MD, who elected not to seek a new term after six years as chair. Jessica Cardin, PhD, becomes interim vice chair, succeeding Sreeganga Chandra, PhD.

Each year, the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) chooses remarkable individuals to be recognized for their various achievements in the realm of life sciences. Pietro De Camilli received the E.B. Wilson Medal, presented to distinguished researchers for their far-reaching contributions to cell biology over a lifetime in science.

Light-inducible dimerization protein modules enable precise temporal and spatial control of biological processes in non-invasive fashion. Among them, Magnets are photoreceptors requiring simultaneous photoactivation to interact, enabling high spatiotemporal confinement of dimerization with a single-excitation wavelength. However, Magnets require concatemerization for efficient responses and cell preincubation at 28oC to be functional. We overcame the limitations by structure-guided protein engineering and validation by cellular assays. The resulting reagents, “enhanced Magnets” (eMags), have greater thermal stability and dimerization efficiency, as well as faster association and dissociation kinetics. We confirmed their effectiveness in several applications including protein recruitment to different organelles, the generation/expansion of organelle contact sites, and the rapid and reversible reconstitution of inter-organelle tethers that have key regulatory function in lipid transport.

Two Yale research teams will each receive approximately $9 million in grants from the Aligning Sciences Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) initiative to study the underlying biology of Parkinson’s disease.