Cell News 03&04/2017
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land, USA, and Germany as well as the enthusiastic participants
significantly contributed to the success of the workshop. We were
extremely satisfied that students actively participated in the lively
discussions with their colleagues including the keynote speakers.
The workshop opened with the inspiring keynote lecture “Cell
biology of influenza virus uncoating” given by the emeritus Prof.
Ari Helenius from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
in Zürich, Switzerland. Prof. Helenius dedicated his career to
studying intracellular trafficking and protein folding using viruses
as functional cargo. His work is an excellent illustration of how
viruses can contribute to improve our understanding of complex
cell biological processes. During his keynote, Prof. Helenius high-
lighted the various strategies that viruses use to highjack cellular
mechanisms for cell entry. In the second part of his presentation
he focused on endocytic cellular factors subverted by influenza
virus for entry including uncoating.
Prof. Beate Sodeik from the Hannover Medical School, Germany
gave the second enlightening keynote, entitled “New twists on
enveloped virus entry and exit”. Prof. Sodeik investigates cell entry,
trafficking and assembly/exit of alpha-herpesviruses with a major
focus on Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1). She discussed the
transport of HSV1 in human neurons and the host cell proteins
that guide HSV1 capsid to the nucleus, where the viral genome
is released into the nucleoplasm at the nuclear pore. She put a
particular emphasis on the role of importins in axonal transport
within neurons and introduced exciting imaging techniques in
conjunction with in vitro culture systems for murine neurons.
The third exciting keynote, “New twists on enveloped virus entry
and exit”, was given by Prof. Margaret Kielian from the Albert
Einstein College of Medicine in New York, NY, USA. Prof. Kielian
started her lecture by reporting on research that spanned almost
her entire career: membrane fusion proteins. She has used among
other proteins the Semliki Forest virus (SFV) envelope glycoprotein
E1 as a fusion protein model and also explained how this protein
plays a critical role in SFV cellular life cycle, both during entry and
exit. The second part of her presentation described the exciting
new phenomenon of intercellular extensions formed by alphavirus
infected cells and how they are used for cell-to-cell transmission.
Prof. Stefan Pöhlmann from the Leibniz Institute for Primate
Research in Göttingen, Germany, gave the final keynote on “Vi-
rus-activating host cell proteases: determinants of cell entry and
pathogenesis, targets for intervention”. He beautifully described
the role of host proteases in activation/priming required during
entry of diverse enveloped viruses including emerging viruses such
as SARS coronavirus and Ebola virus. He demonstrated the import-
ant role of serin proteases in influenza A virus activation in human
cells and animal models, and concluded with promising studies in
non-human primate models with the perspective to develop new
antiviral strategies.
This year, for the first time a short interactive session on scientific
editing was organized. Dr. Sarai Rodriguez-Navarro, an associate
editor at the journal Viruses (MDPI publishing group), gave an
entertaining and insightful talk on the editorial process, pitfalls
during manuscript submission, and Open Access publishing. This
provided an excellent platform for students to interactively discuss
questions regarding the submission of their scientific work to
international peer-reviewed journals.
Among the many excellent student presentations, the prize
committee had the hard task to select two prizewinners. Venkat
Raman Ramnarayan from the group of Dr. Sebastian Springer at
Jacobs University in Bremen was awarded the prize for the best
student oral presentation with the title “The p24 family protein
TMED10 / Tmp21 / p24
δ
1 anchors m152 / gp40 in the endoplas-
mic reticulum to abolish MHC class I surface expression”.
Due to the high numbers of registrations, the 2017 workshop
featured a poster session in addition to the oral communications.
The poster session was extremely well attended with many fruitful
discussions in a friendly environment. Dr. Miriam Becker from the
lab of Dr. Mario Schelhaas at the University of Münster received the
award for the best poster presentation for her work on the “Entry of
Merkel cell polyomavirus into A549 cells”.
According to immediate feedback from participants ranging from
students to keynote speakers, everybody praised the high quality of
all presentations, the friendly and engaging discussions that lasted
until the last glass of wine. In particular the students appreciated
the feedback on their work and new insights into other topics in
Cell Biology of Viral Infections.
The organizers would like to thank the German Society for Cell
Biology (DGZ) and the Society for Virology (GfV) for their support.
The workshop would also not have been possible without generous
contributions from the Chica and Heinz Schaller (CHS) Foundation
as well as the companies ReBlikon, MDPI, and Becton Dickinson.
We already look forward to the 17th annual workshop, which will
be held again at the Kloster Schöntal, October 15th–17th 2018, with
the new exciting theme, “High resolution approaches in virology:
from cell ultrastructure to OMICS”. More information and updates
can be found on the workshop’s website (
).
MEETING REPORT
Prizewinners: Venkat Raman Ramnarayan, AG Springer, Jacobs Uni-
versität Bremen: “The p24 family protein TMED10/Tmp21/p24
δ
1 an-
chors m152/gp40 in the endoplasmic reticulum to abolish MHC class
I surface expression” and Miriam Becker, AG Schelhaas, Universität
Münster: "Entry of Merkel cell polyomavirus into A549 Cells”.
