New article published in Nature entitled “ATP13A2 deficiency disrupts lysosomal polyamine export” sheds light on a defective lysosomal polyamine exporter (ATP13A2) that represents a lysosome-dependent cell death pathway that may be implicated in several neurodegenerative disorders including Kufor-Rakeb syndrome – a rare form of inherited juvenile-onset Parkinson’s disease.

The new study, published this week in the open access journal Cell Communication and Signaling, was led by the autophagy team at NCMM.

Simon Arvin has been awarded this years Health Student Research Price at the Health PhD day dinner party on 24 January. The prize is awarded to a student that Health wishes to recognise as someone who have submitted extraordinary work. Congratulations!

Saida will focus on studies concerning structural and functional mechanism of the GABA transporter subtype one by combining electrophysiological, fluorescence-based methods and unnatural amino acid mutagenesis. The role of the GABAergic system in mental disorders in general and in depression in particular is gaining momentum. Structural information about the GABA transporter and knowledge of how ligand and ion binding control conformational change can provide the basis for developing drugs that target it

Katia Soud has been working as a research assistant in Tomonori Takeuchi group since July 2019, following to receiving the AU PhD fellowship, she will start her PhD project on the 1st of February under the supervision of Tomonori Takeuchi, the project will answer questions about the mechanisms of dopaminergic memory retention by the locus coeruleus-hippocampus circuit and how novel environments play a role in this process. She will be using newly developed sensors to detect Dopamine release, opticphotometry imaging, and memory tests in rats.

Karren Marie started as PhD student in Anders Nykjær’s group on 1 January 2020. She will be working on unravelling the function of VPS10P domain receptors in communication between glia cells and neurons in memory formation.

Gene Transfer in Rodent Nervous Tissue Following Hindlimb Intramuscular Delivery of Recombinant Adeno-Associated Virus Serotypes AAV2/6, AAV2/8, and AAV2/9

Associate Professor Olav Andersen from Aarhus University and his colleagues from abroad have received a grant of DKK 9.5 million from a joint EU programme. The grant will be use to conduct research into what is known as the SORL1 gene, which is regarded as one of Alzheimer’s most important risk factors, with some variants of the gene even being the cause of the disease.

Bijayalaxmi will be working with Neuronal control of sexual dimorphic acoustic signaling behavior during Drosophila reproduction. And the study of the interneuron circuits and the pre-motor to motor connections involved in male song. She will characterise the function of interneurons involved in male song by a behavioural experiments (song recording) combined with genetic manipulation of defined neuronal classes by neuronal silencing, optogenetic activation, RNAi mediated knockdown of neurotransmission genes or feminisation by expression of genes of the sex determination pathway. Furthermore, she will establish an anatomical atlas of interneurons and integrate it into the previously published atlas of motor neurons assembled in the lab. For this, neurons will be imaged by confocal microscopy and 3 D reconstructed after non-rigid image registration (for methods, se O’Sullivan et al. 2018). She also plan to analyse the connectivity of neurons by activity dependent GRASP (Gfp reconstitution across synaptic partners, cit) and combined activation and calcium imaging experiments.

Bodda, called Chiru, started as an assistant professor in Anders Nykjær's group on 1 December. He will be studying the molecular mechanisms by which SorCS receptors control development and functionality of the nervous system.

Lilian started as an assistant professor in Anders Nykjær's group on 2 January. She will be working on unravelling the cellular and intracellular mechanisms involved in loss of neuronal connectivity and memory impairment during ageing and neurodegenerative disorders.

Charlott Stock has been employed as postdoctoral fellow in Poul Nissen’s research group from start January 2020. Charlott will be working on structural and functional studies of insulin receptor complexes involved in metabolic regulation in brain and how they are affected in brain disorders. The project will combine advanced methods of membrane protein production, protein-protein interactions, cryo-electron microscopy, and cell biology.

As part of the joint Nordic EMBL Partnership call for PhD students, we are seeking outstanding candidates for PhD positions at DANDRITE, FIMM, NCMM and MIMS.

The Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine is a unique association of four national research centres that run complementary translational molecular medicine research in the Nordic countries using the operational model and core principles of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).

The Lundbeck Foundation is awarding grants worth DKK 232 million (USD 34 million) to six leading neuroscientists. The LF Professorships programme is the Foundation’s largest grant allocation to date.

Professor Marco Capogna has been awarded 3.5 mio. DKK from Lundbeckfonden & NIH BRAIN Initiative for a research project on the role of GABAergic neuron types of human cortex on synaptic plasticity.