MIMS Spotlight Series: Meet Barbara Forró

Text written by Nóra Lehotai and Barbara Forró. Photo credits: Csaba Guti.

I had a chat with Barbara, who is a postdoctoral fellow in Maria Fällman’s group. After living in Hungary and Canada, she moved to Umeå in August 2020. She shares her home with her husband and “never enough” number of plants.

Can you tell us about your role at MIMS; what are you working on now?

My main project is about shedding light on the molecular mechanism of Salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium invasion and persistence. I am being fortunate to analyze a huge bulk of RNA seq data from an in vivo mice experiment, that would drive us closer to understand the mechanisms of the bacterial persistence in the host and, as always in science, would raise more fascinating questions regarding the topic. Outside of the main project, I am taking the time to learn more about mechanisms of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis invasion and persistence in the host.

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UCMR is looking for a research coordinator

 Umeå Centre for Microbial Research (UCMR) is looking for a research coordinator. For more information and application please go to: https://www.umu.se/en/work-with-us/open-positions/research-coordinator_383570/ . Application deadline: April 13, 2021. To find out more about the institute, visit their website at https://www.ucmr.umu.se/ .

Prestigious postdoctoral fellowship for structural biology and infection research in Umeå

Text written by Himanshu Sharma and Nóra Lehotai. Photo: Himanshu Sharma by the Titan Krios cryo-electron microscope at the Umeå Centre for Electron Microscopy (UCEM). Credit: Kai Ehrenbolger. 

Himanshu Sharma, a postdoctoral researcher in Jonas Barandun’s lab at MIMS and the Department of Molecular Biology, Umeå University, got awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Individual Fellowship, giving him the opportunity to carry out the proposed research project with the financial support of 191 000 € over two years.

“I am exhilarated to have received this research funding. This fellowship gives me an opportunity to investigate the intriguing infection mechanism of microsporidia through cutting-edge methods in structural biology. Microsporidia are a class of obligate parasites that employ unique methods to infect almost all organisms, including bees, fish, farmed animals and humans. Apart from being an enormous environmental and healthcare challenge, these organisms also exhibit a range of evolutionarily distinctive cellular processes. To understand these interesting but understudied pathogens, I am going to combine my existing knowledge in RNA biology with cryo-EM to understand the critical events in the microsporidia lifecycle. Through these advancements, I aim to develop an understanding of potential drug targets to curb the growing menace of microsporidia infections.”- he commented. 

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Identification of a protective protein that reduces the severity of COVID-19

Written by Elin Thysell

Researchers at Umeå University and their international collaborative partners have discovered that increased levels of the protein OAS1 are associated with reduced mortality and less severe disease requiring ventilation among patients with COVID-19. Using drugs that boost OAS1 levels could be explored to try to improve these outcomes. The findings were published on 26th February 2021 in Nature Medicine.

“Our analysis shows evidence that OAS1 has a protective effect against COVID-19 susceptibility and severity,” explains Dr. Elin Thysell, researcher at Medical Biosciences and Deputy Project Manager for PREDICT. PREDICT is the newly launched initiative at the Medical Faculty with the goal of finding tools early that make it possible to prevent or alleviate diseases by developing the use of biobank samples in the healthcare area. “This is a very exciting development in the race to identify potential therapies to treat patients because there are already therapies in pre-clinical development that boost OAS1 and could be explored for their effect against SARS-CoV-2 infection.” says Johan Normark, specialist doctor in infectious diseases at Umeå University Hospital and principal investigator of the CoVUm study. This clinical study for COVID-19, carried out as a collaboration between Region Västerbotten and Umeå University, studies immunity and the course of the disease furthermore, why the disease strikes so hard on certain individuals.

Read more: Identification of a protective protein that reduces the severity of COVID-19

Finding a new way to uncover targets for future antibiotics

Text by Gabrielle Beans Picon

How do you take great ideas and turn them into innovative research? In this case the Integrated Science Lab, IceLab, offered up some help in the form of funding for a postdoc who could act as a bridge between computational and experimental research areas, launching a project by Professor Maria Fällman and Senior Research Assistant Kemal Avican, both at the Department of Molecular Biology and MIMS. 

Credit: Gabrielle Beans Picon

Data generation in a molecular biology lab, sampling of human specimens from clinics and data analysis in a computational lab – all these ingredients make Professor Maria Fällman’s and Senior Research Assistant Kemal Avican’s project interdisciplinary.

Collaboration and genuine interest in research taking place outside of your expertise are at the core of interdisciplinary research. Maria Fällman and Kemal Avican have been working together for a long time, aiming to uncover new targets for future antimicrobials to fight the threat of antibiotic resistance. Along the way, they established a database of stress responses of 32 clinically important human bacterial pathogens to twelve different conditions mimicking the human body.

Read more: Finding a new way to uncover targets for future antibiotics