Blog
Our collaboration with the former Urban laboratory over the last few years has yielded this article in Cell Chemical Biology, which shows that pharmacological targetting of Plasmodium falciparum rhomboid proteases by ketoamides is feasible. Inhibition of PfROM4 blocks the entry of the parasite into the host cells and cures the culture, hence establishing Plasmodium rhomboids as new drug targets.
https://www.cell.com/cell-chemical-biology/fulltext/S2451-9456(20)30333-0
Two back to back papers in collaboration with Thierry Doan in Marseille and Chris Tang in Oxford, showing that bacterial rhomboid proteases are key for membrane protein quality control in bacteria, both as proteases and pseudoproteases, which is reminiscent of ERAD and Derlins in eukaryotes.
And an interesting News and Views piece summarising both papers and giving a broad persective written by Knopf and Lemberg:
Knopf JD, Lemberg MK (2020) Derlins with scissors: primordial ERAD in bacteria. EMBO J 39: e105012
It was a great pleasure to work with all the collaborators including Oliver Hoeller for the cover art!
Particular congratulations to all first authors!
New paper from the lab on FRET and membrane protein dimerization in membranes comes online in the Biophysical Journal. Excellent collaboration with biophysicist Dr. Jana Humpolíčková of IOCB!
