Turning Points

Eiji Hara is a professor at the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Japan. Eiji recalls the discovery of the basis for the irreversibility of cellular senescence, published in Nature Cell Biology in 2006.

Pietro De Camilli is a professor of neuroscience and of cell biology at Yale University, CT, as well as an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Pietro discusses how his group’s 1999 Nature Cell Biology study linking amphiphysin with dynamin in clathrin-mediated endocytosis came to be.

Huck-Hui Ng is a senior group leader at the Genome Institute of Singapore of A*STAR. In this article, Ng revisits the 2009 Nature Cell Biology study in which he and his team described the role of Esrrb in somatic cell reprogramming.

Sarah Teichmann, head of cellular genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, reflects on the dawn of the single-cell genomics era and a pivotal decision that changed the course of her career.

Maria Antonietta (Antonella) De Matteis is a professor of biology at the University of Naples Federico II and leads the cell biology programme at the Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine in Pozzuoli, Italy. Antonella recalls the beginning of her research program on phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P) at the Golgi, published in our pages in 1999 and 2004.

Danfeng Cai, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, discusses her career path, including her work on the biomolecular condensation of YAP, and her excitement in her ongoing work on transcriptional condensates.

Nancy Kleckner is the Herchel Smith professor of molecular biology at Harvard University. She recalls the evolution of her research interests from pure genetics, through biochemistry and molecular biology of DNA, to the roles of mechanical forces for whole-chromosome spatial patterning and dynamics.

After earning a PhD in Molecular Systems Biology from ETH Zurich and studying cancer metabolism as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, Sarah-Maria Fendt started an independent research group in 2013 in a joint appointment at the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) and the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium.

Melissa Little is an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow and Cell Biology Theme Director at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia. She also leads Stem Cells Australia, University of Melbourne. She studies kidney morphogenesis and regeneration using pluripotent stem cells.

Melina Schuh did her PhD at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory with Jan Ellenberg. She became group leader at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, in 2009, and was appointed Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, in 2016.

Shubha Tole obtained her BSc in Life Sciences and Biochemistry from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, India, in 1987. After a PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1994, she did her postdoc at the University of Chicago. In 1999, she joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, in Mumbai, as a faculty member.

M. Celeste Simon is Scientific Director of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute and Arthur H. Rubenstein, MBBCh Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies tumour and stromal cell responses to variable oxygen and nutrient levels and is a devoted mentor of biomedical trainees.

Anne Simonsen is a Professor at the Department of Molecular Medicine at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences of the University of Oslo, Norway. Her work focuses on lipid-binding proteins in membrane trafficking and autophagy, and their links to disease.

Asifa Akhtar is Director at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics. Her lab focuses on chromatin and epigenetic regulation. A member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation, she received the European Life Science Organization award in 2008 and the Wilhelm Feldberg Prize in 2017.

Nancy Y. Ip is Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, the Morningside Professor of Life Science, and Director of the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China. Her career in the field of neuroscience spans over three decades.

Professor Kum Kum Khanna heads the Signal Transduction Laboratory at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia. She studies the role of the DNA damage response in tissue homeostasis and disease, including how to exploit its dysregulation in breast cancer to develop targeted therapeutic approaches.

Mayana Zatz is Professor of Genetics and Director of the Human Genome and Stem-Cell Research Center at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She works on neuromuscular disorders, ageing and, more recently, Zika virus and cancer. She has a prolific publication record and is actively involved in ethical aspects of genetic research.

Sandrine Etienne-Manneville investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying cell migration in health and disease. She is Head of the Cell Polarity, Migration and Cancer laboratory, Director of the CNRS UMR3691 unit at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France, a professor of cell biology and a mother of four.

Maho Hamasaki is an associate professor at Osaka University, Japan. Maho’s laboratory focuses on investigating the mechanistic underpinnings of autophagy and the role of the autophagic process in disease.

Fiona Watt runs the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King’s College London and is an outspoken advocate for women scientists. Since April 2018, she has been on secondment as Executive Chair of the Medical Research Council, one of the major funders of biomedical research in the UK.