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Cell News 2/2015
RESEARCH NEWS
protein quality control. Specifically, we are addressing the
following questions: What are the major downstream effects of
GFAT-1 gain-of-function? What type of glycosylation and what
substrates are mostly affected by HP activation? Which particu-
lar molecular changes trigger the proteome-protective effects?
Altogether, this makes GFAT-1 an attractive target for research
into the aging process including the prospect of using HP acti-
vation to counter proteotoxicity in human disease.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all members of the Denzel lab for support! This work is supported
by an ERC starting grant (640254 - MetAGEn), by a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant
(CIG) (303714 - ER longevity), by a BMBF grant (EndoProtect), and by the Cologne Graduate
School for Ageing Research.
Biographies
Moritz Horn
studied bioche-
mistry at the University of
Tübingen, Germany. For his
Ph.D. work he joined the lab of
Adam Antebi at the Max Planck
Institute for Biology of Ageing,
Cologne, Germany, where he
studied protein homeostasis in
the context of stem cell dyna-
mics and development using
the nematode
C. elegans
. For
his post-doc he stayed at the
Max Planck Institute and started in the new research group of
Martin Denzel to understand the role of hexosamine pathway
flux in mammalian protein quality control and ageing.
Kira Allmeroth
joined Martin
Denzel’s laboratory at the end
of 2014 to pursue her Ph.D. in
biological sciences. Before mo-
ving to Cologne, she did her
Bachelors in biotechnology at
the University Bielefeld and
then studied molecular biome-
dicine at the Westfälische Wil-
helms-University Münster for
her Masters. During that time,
she focused on the role of RNA-
binding proteins in ALS using the mouse as a model system.
Martin Denzel
studied Hu-
man Biology in Marburg and
in Hamburg, Germany. He then
went on to do his Ph.D. with
Barbara Ranscht at the San-
ford-Burnham Medical Re-
search Institute in La Jolla,
California, where he did cardio-
vascular and tumor biology
research. For his postdoc he
joined Adam Antebi’s lab at the
Max Planck Institute for Bio-
logy of Ageing in Cologne, were he performed forward
genetic screens for
C. elegans
mutants with improved protein
quality control and extended lifespan. Since September 2014 he
is an independent group leader at the Max Planck Institute Bio-
logy of Ageing.
