WEHI Wednesday Seminar hosted by Professor David Komander
 

Associate Professor Bernhard Lechtenberg
Laboratory Head – Ubiquitin Signalling division, WEHI
 

E3 ligases in ubiquitin signalling – from mechanisms to biology to drug discovery

 

Davis Auditorium
Join via SLIDO enter code #WEHIWednesday
Including Q&A session
 

E3 ubiquitin ligases are the effector enzymes of the ubiquitination cascade, a central eukaryotic signalling machinery that not only tags proteins for proteasomal degradation but also has fundamental non-degradative roles in regulating cellular signalling pathways, organelle turnover and immune pathways. Accordingly, misregulated ubiquitin signalling is involved in many human diseases, such as cancers, neurodegeneration and autoimmune diseases. The 670 human E3 ubiquitin ligases account for most of the diversity in the ubiquitination cascade and drive substrate specificity and formation of differently linked polyubiquitin chains including branched polyubiquitin. Over the past years, Bernhard’s lab gained fundamental insights into the molecular mechanisms and biology of members of the RING-between-RING (RBR) E3 ligase family. In this seminar, Bernhard will outline his lab’s progress in understanding the RBR E3 ligase catalytic mechanism and regulation and highlight recent examples of RBR E3 ligases controlling ribosomal quality control pathways and the emerging field of non-proteinaceous ubiquitination.

Bernhard joined WEHI in March 2019 to establish his laboratory in the newly formed Ubiquitin Signalling division. Prior to that, he was an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) in San Diego, USA, and a BHF-funded PhD student at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR) at the University of Cambridge, UK. At WEHI, Bernhard’s laboratory studies the structures and mechanisms of E3 ubiquitin ligases in cellular signalling pathways to unravel their biological functions and to enable them for drug discovery. In parallel, Bernhard is part of the executive team and leads the structural biology and biochemistry team at WEHI’s MRFF-funded Australian Centre for Targeted Therapeutics (ACTT) and is a co-founder of its spinout company Ternarx. ACTT/Ternarx’s mission is to develop a targeted protein degrader platform and targeted protein degrader drugs against currently undrugged transcription factors in cancers with unmet clinical need.

All welcome!