The annual LMB Lab Symposium concluded with the announcements of the 2024 recipients of the Perutz Student Prize, the Joan A. Steitz Postdoc Prize, and the Eileen Southgate Staff Prize. All three prizes are supported by the Max Perutz Fund, which was established in 1980 in honour of LMB co-founder Max Perutz and aids in the promotion of education and research in molecular biology and other related biomedical sciences.
Perutz Student Prize
2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the Perutz Student Prize, which is given annually in recognition of outstanding Ph.D. research performed and published at the LMB. This year’s awardees are Lidia Ripoll-Sánchez and Akaash Kumar.
Lidia, a Ph.D. student in William Schafer’s group, received the prize for generating the complete neuropeptide connectome of the worm C. elegans. To achieve this, Lidia integrated three complex datasets containing ligand-receptor data, single cell transcriptomic data and electron microscopy data. The result is the first comprehensive, single neuron-resolution map of neuropeptide signalling in a whole animal nervous system. This work will enable future research to interrogate the relative contributions of wireless and wired signalling between neurons.
Akaash’s Ph.D. work with Emmanuel Derivery and James Manton has focused on the creation of a new fluorescent microscope consisting of a multispectral camera system and novel unmixing software (N.B. preprint – not yet peer reviewed). This new system enables the unprecedented imaging of eight different components with millisecond time resolution throughout entire cells. This unlocks simultaneous visualisation of multiple, highly dynamic, cellular events, such as vesicular trafficking and organelle rearrangements. This is a significant addition to the toolkit for intracellular, biological studies.
Joan A. Steitz Postdoc Prize
The Joan A. Steitz Postdoc Prize is endowed by Royalty Pharma through donation to the Max Perutz Fund. The Prize is presented annually to outstanding LMB postdocs who have been in post for fewer than six years. The 2024 awardees are Andriko von Kügelgen, Mayuri Gogoi, Rongzhen Tian, and Lara Krüger.
Andriko’s pioneering postdoctoral research in Tanmay Bharat’s group has demonstrated how marine microbes use their surface S-layer structures to sequester the minute quantities of ammonia present in the oceans. This is a nitrogen converting process of planetary relevance and his work included cultivation of the slow growing Nitrosopumilus archaea, cutting-edge, high-resolution cellular electron tomography, and full-atom modelling to reveal this important mechanism for the first time.
Mayuri, a postdoc in Andrew McKenzie’s group, is recognised for her discovery that the cytokine LIF promotes migration of immune cells from the lung to the draining lymph node. This is important because the immune system must balance a rapid, localised tissue response with an adaptive response to clear infection. Mayuri demonstrated that mice whose ILC2 cells cannot produce LIF retain immune cells in the lung, hindering lymph reactions that normally generate the adaptive immune responses.
Rongzhen’s work in Jason Chin’s group reached an important goal in engineering biology – a novel directed evolution technology that achieves mutation rates at significant orders of magnitude higher than any cellular genome found in nature. He achieved this by deconstructing a phage system to uncouple replication of the target gene from that of the host genome. The technology allows the evolutionary trajectories of new functions to be explored in unprecedented depth, and proteins and enzymes with new or improved activities to be rapidly generated.
In a daring feat of cellular engineering, Lara, a postdoc in Emmanuel Derivery’s group in collaboration with Joseph Watson, has dissected the molecular mechanism of how cells divide asymmetrically to give rise to two daughter cells with different fates and properties. Using an elegant tool to artificially create an asymmetric cap of key polarity proteins on otherwise unpolarised cells, she identified the kinase aPKC as the key determinant in spindle symmetry breaking, a prerequisite for the asymmetric partitioning of cellular components.
Eileen Southgate Prize
Now in its third year, the Eileen Southgate Prize was introduced as part of the LMB’s pledge under the Technician Commitment and is named after a technician who gave instrumental support to several Nobel Prize-winning studies throughout her decades at the LMB. The award is given those who have made an exceptional contribution to the LMB. This year’s winners are Fan Zhang, Kirsty Kemp, Anna Yeates, and Monika Napora.
Fan is Deputy Manager of the LMB’s Flow Cytometry Facility. Her experience, biological and technical expertise, and deep understanding of how to support everyone with their flow cytometry experiments and cell sorting requirements are key pillars of cutting-edge discoveries made at the LMB. She is passionate about everyone’s experiments and shows great interest in them, going the extra mile to help researchers and to train them. Fan is a technically brilliant scientist appreciated by everyone who works with her.
Kirsty is recognised for her outstanding contributions to the LMB’s Biological Services Group and excelling in her role as Training Supervisor, with a willingness to go over and above what is expected. Kirsty’s fantastic work on the mouse ultrasound project has reduced the number of mice needed for the required offspring and has generated a large amount of interest in the field. Through her work, Kirsty has also made an outstanding contribution to our openness in animal research programme.
Anna is a key member of the Electron Microscopy Facility and provides outstanding support to EM users, making sure instruments run smoothly, coordinating repairs and maintenance, ensuring there is next to no downtime. She goes above and beyond to take care of any issues reported and makes herself available to users when they ask for help and training. Anna is also learning new approaches and her dedication has been crucial for the LMB to remain at the forefront in this fast-moving field.
Monika is the first person everyone sees as they arrive at the LMB Reception. Her warm welcome generates a wonderful first impression for visitors, and makes a great start to our days, every day. Monika is always happy to go the extra mile to help and take on additional workloads, especially when we have events and visitors. Monika more than deserves recognition for her outstanding contribution to the LMB.
Further references
Max Perutz Fund
Previous Perutz Student Prize Winners
Previous Postdoc Prize Winners
Previous Eileen Southgate Prize Winners