Izabela Sumara

Fellowship 2014

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Izabela Sumara obtained her PhD in the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria. She then held the postdoctoral positions at the IMP and in the Institute of Biochemistry, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, supported by the EMBO long term fellowships and the Roche Research Foundation. In 2006, she received the prestigous research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation and got promoted to a Senior Research Associate level at the ETH Zurich. During this time she consolidated her research on regulation of mitosis  by the ubiquitin system, which led to the discovery of a mitotic factor, CUL3 E3-ligase. In October 2010, she joined IGBMC as a group leader and CNRS researcher, supported by the prestigious ATIP-Avenir program. In October 2011, she obtained her Habilitation à diriger les recherches from the University of Strasbourg. Her laboratory studies the role of the novel ubiquitin-related factors involved in the regulation of mitotic kinases and thereby mitotic progression and genome integrity.

Allosteric regulation of the mitotic Polo-like Kinase 1 (PLK1) during development

Post-doc: Stéphane Schmucker

Mitotic division insures organism reproduction and development. However, the spatio-temporal coordination of the mitotic and developmental pathways is still poorly understood. Phosphorylation and ubiquitination pathways are tightly connected during mitosis. Polo-like kinase 1 (PLK1) is one of the key mitotic kinases and attractive cancer drug target. Our data described a coherent model of PLK1 activation by phosphorylation and inactivation by ubiquitination. We want to understand the allosteric mode of regulation of PLK1 kinase during mitosis and in the development of multicellular organism. The unique combination of approaches in human cells and in the developing worm will be used. These studies may help future desing of novel class of kinase inhibitors and in the long term understanding regulation of other protein kinases.