At 2pm (GMT) on Monday 9th December, Mónica Bettencourt-Dias will deliver the 2024 César Milstein Lecture, titled ‘Centrioles in homeostasis, disease and evolution: tiny organelles, multiple and critical functions.’ The lecture will be delivered in the LMB’s Max Perutz Lecture Theatre, and anyone interested is warmly invited to attend; if you are not at the LMB and wish to attend a seminar, please contact the seminar secretary.
Mónica Bettencourt-Dias leads the Cell Cycle Regulation laboratory at the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM) in Portugal. Her group investigates the assembly and maintenance of complex subcellular structures. In particular, she focuses on centrioles, which are vital to the formation of centrosomes and cilia within cells. Defects in these can be seen in many cancers, brain development diseases and other disorders known as ciliopathies. Additionally, as centrioles and cilia are found throughout the eukaryotic tree of life, they are apt assemblies to examine the evolution of eukaryotic cellular structures.
Championing a multi-disciplinary approach, Mónica’s group have identified key mechanisms which determine the assembly, maintenance, and function of centrioles and cilia. Using this new understanding, they have also characterised the mechanisms involved in instances where these structures exhibit abnormal assembly in cases of human disease.
Mónica’s research achievements have been recognised with several awards, including the European Young Investigator Award from Eppendorf, appointment to EMBO’s Young Investigator Programme (YIP), and the Award for Basic Research from Pfizer. She was elected a Member of EMBO in 2015, was director of the Gulbenkian Institute (2018-2023) and chair of the EU-LIFE alliance of Institutes (2022-2024).
Lecture abstract
Centrioles/basal bodies are microtubule-based structures that form centrosomes, a major microtubule organising centre, and template the formation of the cilium, which is important for signalling and motility. While these structures were described more than a century ago, due to their small size, only recently tools became available to investigate them in different contexts. I will discuss efforts from our laboratory towards decoding the principles that regulate the assembly and maintenance of these structures, as well as their variations observed at different scales and contexts, in different tissues, in disease and evolution.
Background information
The César Milstein Lecture is named in honour of César Milstein, an LMB Nobel Laureate. This named lecture is one of a series of named lectures organised by the LMB and given by eminent scientists from around the world. These talks are supported financially by AstraZeneca and the Max Perutz Fund.
César was born in Argentina in 1927. After completing Ph.D.s in both Buenos Aires and Cambridge, he embarked on a brief spell of research in Argentina before he joined the LMB in 1963. César then spent the rest of his career and his life here.
César developed an early interest in immunology, with his research concentrated on antibody structure and diversity. In the early 1970s, he and his postdoc, Georges Köhler, developed the technique used to produce monoclonal antibodies. This work led to them being jointly awarded the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. The technique developed by César and Georges has since been developed further by LMB colleagues for therapeutic applications, leading to the creation of several MRC spin-out companies. César continued his research on how somatic mutation arises in immunoglobulin genes. He died in Cambridge on 24th March 2002.