Biochemical Journal Poster winner

Natalia Fili

Natali graduated from the National Technical University of Athens as a Chemical Engineer. She was awarded a full Scholarship for Post-Graduate Studies Abroad, by the Hellenic Republic State Scholarships’ Foundation to undertake her MSc in Biochemical Research at Imperial College. Natali pursued her PhD studies in the Cell Biophysics Laboratory at Cancer Research UK, under the supervision of Dr. B. Larijani (Cell Biophysics) and Professor P. Parker (Protein Phosphorylation), and Dr. R. Woscholski (Imperial College London). Natali’s research was aimed at developing a regulated device, which could locally modify the phosphoinositide content of specific subcellular membranes in intact cells. This was achieved by targeting the membrane with a specific phosphatase, using the rapamycin-mediated dimerization of FKBP with a portion of FRAP/mTOR. In particular, this approach was applied to investigate how compartmental loss of PtdIns(3)P can affect the dynamics and function of early endosomes. This was achieved by exploiting the endosomal localization of the small GTPase Rab5a and the PtdIns(3)P-specific 3-phosphatase activity of myotubularin. Given the inducible and localized nature of the approach, for the first time, PtdIns(3)P was attributed a key role in maintaining early endosome morphology and in regulating receptor efflux towards both the recycling and the degradation pathway. This novel approach could have broad application in the in vivo manipulation of compartment-specific events.