We are pleased to introduce our newest members of the JCB editorial board. We are grateful to these and all of our board members for their contributions to JCB and service to the cell biology community.
Dr. Tamas Balla is a senior investigator leading the Section of Molecular Signal Transduction, as part of the Program for Developmental Neuroscience within the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health. Dr. Balla received his MD degree in 1979 from Semmelweis University Medical School in Budapest, Hungary and his PhD and DSc degrees from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1987 and 2009, respectively. His research has been primarily concerned with the roles of phosphoinositides in cellular trafficking and signaling with particular emphasis on phosphoinositide 4-kinases. His group was one of the first to report on live cell imaging of PtdIns(4,5)P2 and PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 and continues to focus on improving methods by which to visualize and manipulate phosphoinositides and other lipids in specific cellular compartments in intact living cells. Dr. Balla is a member of the American Society of Cell Biology, the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Hungarian Physiological Society. He is an outside member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Photo courtesy of Tamas Balla.
Dr. Manuela Baccarini is full professor of cell signaling at the Center for Molecular Biology, Max F. Perutz Laboratories at the University of Vienna, Austria. The Baccarini laboratory investigates the essential function of RAF and MEK in in vivo models of tissue development, remodeling, and neoplasia. To this end, they combine phenotype analysis in the context of the whole organism (in vivo) as well as of cells (ex vivo) with biochemical experiments in ablated cells to elucidate the molecular basis of a given phenotype. Photo courtesy of Daniel Hinterramskogler.
Dr. Maureen Barr is a professor of genetics at Rutgers University. Dr. Barr earned a BA in biology from Rutgers University and her PhD from Columbia University. During her postdoctoral training with Paul Sternberg at the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Barr first demonstrated the connection between cilia and polycystic kidney disease (PKD) in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Dr. Barr received tenure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and relocated to Rutgers University in 2007. Her research program uses C. elegans as a model system to study fundamental questions in cilia cell biology and to model human PKD and other ciliopathies. Many of these ciliary genes and pathways act in the C. elegans nervous system to control behavior. Therefore, the Barr laboratory is also interested in neurogenetics, neuroplasticity, and stress-induced neuronal restructuring. Most recently, the Barr laboratory has become fascinated with extracellular vesicles—nanocommunication devices that cells shed and release to influence the behavior of other cells, tissues, or even organisms. Photo courtesy of Maureen Barr.
Dr. Valérie Castellani received her PhD from the University of Lyon and performed postdoctoral research at the University of Marseille-Luminy. Dr. Castellani is now research director at the NeuroMyoGene Institute at the University of Lyon. The Castellani laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms that control the spatial orientation of neuronal cells during polarization, both at early stages of progenitor cell division and during neuronal differentiation and building of neuronal networks. The laboratory also investigates how topographic cues regulate the dissemination of tumoral cells in pediatric cancers with embryonic origin. Photo courtesy of Valérie Castellani.
Dr. Daniela Cimini studies mitotic chromosome segregation, chromosome numerical aberrations, and the interplay between the two. She received her PhD in genetics and molecular biology from “La Spaienza” University of Rome and performed postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Ted Salmon at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2006, she joined the faculty of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where she is now a professor in the department of biological sciences and biology fellow in the Biocomplexity Institute. Research in the Cimini laboratory at Virginia Polytechnic Institute focuses on the role of mechanics and dynamics of mitotic apparatus components in ensuring accurate chromosome segregation and the causes and consequences of chromosome numerical aberrations. Photo courtesy of Daniela Cimini.
Dr. Anne Ephrussi received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and performed her postdoctoral research at Harvard University and the Whitehead Institute, MIT, in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Ephrussi has been a group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) since 1992, the head of EMBL International Centre for Advanced Training since 2005, and head of the developmental biology unit since 2007. The Ephrussi group dissects the mechanisms that underlie intracellular RNA transport and localized translation—fundamental processes that mediate the functional polarization of cells during development and in the nervous system. Research in the laboratory combines live-imaging, super-resolution microscopy, genetics, and biochemistry, using Drosophila oocytes, to understand how mRNAs are transported, anchored, and locally translated. Photo courtesy of Marietta Schupp (EMBL).
Dr. Sandrine Etienne-Manneville received her PhD from University Paris VII and completed her postdoctoral research with Alan Hall at the University College London. She is a Centre national de la recherche scientifique research director and currently works at the Pasteur Institute. The Etienne-Manneville laboratory studies the control of cell polarization and the mechanisms regulating astrocyte migration and glioblastoma invasion. Photo courtesy of the Etienne-Manneville laboratory.
Dr. Marcia Haigis is an associate professor in the department of cell biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. After graduate training in protein biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Haigis studied mitochondrial sirtuins during her postdoctoral research at MIT. The Haigis laboratory aims to identify novel regulatory mechanisms that control mitochondrial metabolism in response to cell stress with the ultimate goal of understanding how these mechanisms contribute to aging and diseases of aging, such as cancer. Photo courtesy of Marcia Haigis.
Dr. Tarun Kapoor is a professor at The Rockefeller University. Dr. Kapoor received his PhD from Harvard University and completed postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School before joining The Rockefeller University as a head of laboratory in 2001. Dr. Kapoor’s laboratory works at the interface of chemistry and biology to investigate the molecular and physical mechanisms that explain how exactly one copy of the genome is delivered to each daughter cell during cell division. Photo courtesy of John Abbott.
Dr. Andres Leschziner is a professor of cellular and molecular medicine and professor of molecular biology at the University of California, San Diego. The Leschziner group is interested in understanding how large macromolecular machines couple energy, in the form of nucleotide hydrolysis, to conformational changes and in the functional roles played by these structural rearrangements. The laboratory has focused on chromatin dynamics and intracellular transport using a combination of cell biological, biochemical, biophysical, and structural approaches with a particular focus on cryo-electron microscopy. Photo courtesy of the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Brendan Manning is a professor in the department of genetics and complex diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Manning is also director of the PhD program in biological sciences in public health, and a faculty member of the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. Research in the Manning laboratory is delineating how signals from nutrients and growth factors are propagated to coordinately regulate nutrient metabolism, with implications in a wide variety of complex human diseases. Research efforts are focused, in large part, on defining the regulatory mechanisms and functions of the PI3K-mTOR signaling network. Photo courtesy of Brendan Manning.
Dr. Tobias Meyer is a professor in the chemical and systems biology department at Stanford University. The Meyer laboratory seeks to understand how human cells sense hormones, growth factors, and stress and how they integrate and transduce these signals to make decisions to polarize, move, or divide. The laboratory investigates these cellular regulatory systems by identifying the key signaling components and measuring when and where signaling occurs as we watch cells decide to move forward or enter the cell cycle. Projects are focused on understanding the general principles of how signal transduction systems work, which often requires the development of new experimental and analysis tools involving fluorescent microscopy, small molecule and light perturbations, systematic siRNA screens, bioinformatics, genomics, and quantitative modeling of signaling pathways. Photo courtesy of Tobias Meyer.
Dr. Liz Miller is a group leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Research in the Miller laboratory is broadly aimed at understanding basic mechanisms of secretory protein biogenesis, focusing on protein quality control within the ER. Largely using Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model system, the Miller laboratory probes the interface between folding of polytopic membrane proteins and vesicle-mediated ER export. Photo courtesy of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
Dr. Maxence (Max) Nachury studied biology and biochemistry at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris) before joining the laboratory of Karsten Weis (first at University of California, San Francisco, and then at University of California, Berkeley) for his PhD. There, he studied the role of the small GTPase Ran in enforcing the directionality of nucleocytoplasmic transport and in chromatin-driven self-organization of the mitotic spindle (in collaboration with Rebecca Heald). For his postdoc, Max moved to Stanford University and then Genentech to work with Peter Jackson on the cell cycle before switching his interests toward the primary cilium. Since starting his research group at Stanford University in 2008, his laboratory has worked to disentangle the molecular basis of Bardet-Biedl Syndrome (BBS), a prototypical ciliopathy characterized by obesity, retinal degeneration, polydactyly, and cystic kidneys. Through biochemical reconstitution, single molecule imaging of signaling receptor dynamics, and in situ proteomics, his laboratory has established that the BBSome, a stable complex of eight BBS proteins, moves membrane proteins out of cilia by ferrying them across the transition zone, a diffusion barrier at the base of cilia. Other interests of his laboratory include signal-dependent ectocytosis, a novel mechanism that packages activated signaling receptors into extracellular vesicles at the tip of cilia, tubulin acetylation, and centriole regulation. He moved his laboratory to the University of California, San Francisco, in 2017. Dr. Nachury has been the recipient of a Sloan Fellowship, a Searle Scholar Award, a Klingenstein Fellowship, the ASCB Early Career Life Scientist Award, and a Keith Porter Fellowship. Photo courtesy Matthew Scott.
Will Prinz is chief of the lipid trafficking and organelle biogenesis section at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disorders, National Institutes of Health. The Prinz laboratory studies organelle biogenesis, membrane contact sites, and intracellular lipid trafficking. The laboratory is particularly interested in understanding how ER subdomains form and function during stress. Photo courtesy of Leah Prinz.
Dr. Agata Smogorzewska is an associate professor at The Rockefeller University. Dr. Smogorzewska received her MD/PhD from The Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medical College, and completed her postdoctoral training and medical residency at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Smogorzewska is the head of the Laboratory of Genome Maintenance, whose research aims are to use Fanconi anemia and other genetic disease to elucidate pathways that prevent stem cell dysfunction and cancer development, with a focus on those that repair DNA. Photo courtesy of Agata Smogorzewska.
Dr. Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla obtained her PhD at the Institut Pasteur in Paris in 2002. She was a postdoctoral fellow at The Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK, between 2002 and 2006 and then worked as a permanent scientist with Laszlo Tora. Dr. Torres-Padilla started her own independent laboratory at the Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire in Strasbourg, France, and has been leading her group since December 2008. The laboratory moved to the Institute of Epigenetics and Stem Cells (IES) in January 2016. Dr. Torres-Padilla is director of the IES at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University. The Torres-Padilla laboratory studies how totipotency is established, how stem cells originate in vivo, and the epigenetic principles behind changes in cellular plasticity and genome reprogramming. Photo courtesy of Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla.
