“International Cystinosis Research Foundation” symposium (Irvine, USA)

Melody Cools and Bruno André attended and contributed to the 4th Symposium organized by the Cystinosis Research Foundation on March 6-7, 2014 at the Beckman Center of the National Academies of Engineering and Science, Irvine, California. The mission of this conference was to unite CRF funded researchers in an effort to encourage collaboration and accelerate the research process.  The keynote speaker at the symposium was Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, a world renowned expert in the field of autophagy.

 

First “structural rewiring” of a yeast amino acid transporter published in JBC

Can1_model_jpg
A study by Ghaddar, Krammer et al. carried out in collaboration with Martine Prévost (ULB, Structure and Function of Biological Membranes) and entitled “Converting the yeast arginine Can1 permease into a lysine permease” has been published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry. This work presents our first structural analysis of a yeast amino acid transporter (see figure). Modelling of the substrate binding site and insertion by mutagenesis of amino-acid substitutions allowed us to switch the substrate-specificity of the permease. This opens the interesting perspective to solve the structural code of amino acid recognition by yeast amino acid permeases and to establish links with regulation.

Milligrams of Gap1 purified

In a novel paper by Debailleul et al. published in Microbial Cell Factories in collaboration with Dr. Cédric Govaerts (Lab of Structure and function of biological membranes, ULB), we report the development of a new inductible expression system in yeast based on the promoter of the GAP1 gene encoding the general amino acid permease. Using this system, a protocol has been implemented to purify in a few days milligrams of the Gap1 permease from yeast cells. This opens important perspectives for future works on the structure-function relationships of this membrane transporter.

Nitrogen catabolite repressible GAP1 promoter, a new tool for efficient recombinant protein production in S. cerevisiaeDebailleul F, Trubbia C, Frederickx N, Lauwers E, Merhi A, Ruysschaert JM, André B, Govaerts C.
Microb Cell Fact. 2013 Dec 26;12(1):129.

Winter Biopark News

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Elie Saliba and Melody Cools got their FRIA fellowship

Good news! Elie Saliba and Melody Cools, two graduate students, got their FRIA fellowships and can thus undertake a PhD thesis work in the lab. Elie (who joined the lab last June) investigates the role of arrestin-like proteins in ubiquitylation and endocytosis of the yeast Gap1 permease, and Melody will study a novel amino acid transporter of the vacuole/lysosome.

7th annual SFMBBM doctoral school meeting in Liège

Kassem Ghaddar (graduate student our the lab) gave a talk on the structure-function relationships of yeast amino acid permeases at the 7th annual “Structure et fonction des macromolécules biologiques, bioinformatique et modélisation (SFMBBM)” doctoral school organized on November 15th at the Université de Liège (Ulg).

“Cell Biology of Yeasts” meeting at Cold Spring Harbor

We attended to and contributed to the “Membranes, Organelles and Traffic” session of the “Cell Biology of Yeasts” meeting which was held on November  5-9. This meeting is organized every two years at the Cold Spring Harbor Lab congress center. Among other things we enjoyed the beautiful autumn colors of the campus (see pictures below).

Autumn Biopark News

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“SMYTE” meeting in Antalya

Bruno André attended and contributed to the 31st “Small Meeting on Yeast Transport and Energetics” which was held in Turkey (Antalya) on September 24-27. The opening “Marcelle Grenson” lecture was given this year by Pr. Georges Diallinas (Athens university, Greece).

Two pregraduate students, C Barthélemy and F Corrillon, joined the lab

We are glad to welcome two new pregraduate students in lab, Céline Barthélemy and Florent Corrllon. Céline will work on endocytosis of amino acid transporters. Florent will work part-time in the group of Martine Prévost (ULB, Structure et Fonction des Membranes Biologiques) and part-time in our lab and will analyze the structure-function relationships of the transporter-like Ssy1 sensor of amino acids. Good luck and much success to both of them.