Mathias Girbig
@MathiasGirbig
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Structural Biologist and Evolutionary Biochemist, PostDoc @KaHochberg lab; @embl, @MRC_LMB, and @FUBiochemistry alumnus
Marburg, Germany
Joined June 2017
Excited to share my first paper as a postdoc with @KaHochberg @mpi_marburg! We've made some fascinating discoveries about the evolution of animal stem cells in colab with @jauchr and @deMendoza_Alex. 🧬🔬 .Link: .(1/n).
nature.com
Nature Communications - The pluripotency program is maintained by transcription factors from the Sox and POU families. Here they identify SOX and POU factors from unicellular relatives of animals...
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RT @OlivierDuss: Excited to share our new work on the earliest steps of Pol-III transcription: We provide structural and kinetic insights i….
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RT @WolframSeifertD: Our TFIIIC story continues with our latest work in NAR (. Using cryo-EM and single-molecule fl….
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RT @OlivierDuss: First paper of our lab today @Nature by Nussi!. We provide a real-time movie on how #transcription and #translation cooper….
nature.com
Nature - Single-molecule fluorescence microscopy experiments with a recombinant Escherichia coli transcription–translation system provides insights into the coordination of the transcription...
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RT @KaHochberg: New paper from the lab: You may remember the strange fractal assemblies we discovered in citrate s….
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RT @SendkerFL: Happy to share our story on evolution of protein quaternary structure!.We discover an astounding variation in assembly acros….
nature.com
Nature Communications - Many enzymes form homo-oligomers, but it is often not clear why. This study follows the evolution self-assembly in citrate synthases across their phylogeny and finds it to...
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RT @deMendoza_Alex: Happy to see our work on Sox/POU origins covered in detail at the @washingtonpost by @KashaPatel. Thanks to @beaplab_ib….
washingtonpost.com
The team used these newly generated stem cells to help form a living, breathing mouse from a developing embryo.
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RT @BolandLab_GE: 🚨Paper alarm.Our new work on APC/C regulation revealed by high resolution cryo-EM structures together with the groups of….
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RT @KaHochberg: New paper from us and @erblabs by @schulluc : It's about the evolution of essentiality. This ques….
embopress.org
imageimageDuring evolution, Rubisco, the carboxylase of photosynthesis, has become completely dependent on an additional subunit. This dependence is found to have evolved through multiple, genetica...
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RT @multicellgenome: Very cool and relevant work and another example of the modular evolution of transcriptional networks at the onset of….
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RT @mpi_marburg: Exciting news 🚀 @MathiasGirbig and @KaHochberg helped showing that essential proteins for animal #stemcell regulation are….
mpi-marburg.mpg.de
A new study published in Nature Communications reveals that critical proteins involved in animal stem cell regulation are much older than previously thought, predating the origin of animals that...
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This research provides new perspectives on the evolution of multicellularity - a major transition in life's history. It could have implications for developmental biology and regenerative medicine! .(9/n)
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Our findings suggest that the evolution of animal stem cells might have involved repurposing pre-existing molecular tools, rather than inventing entirely new mechanisms. (8/n).
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Interestingly, while we found POU proteins in choanoflagellates too, they couldn't induce pluripotency. This suggests that POU factors needed further adaptations to function in animal stem cells. (7/n)
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Many thanks to our collaborators, especially to my joint-first authors Ya Gao @Reaya27 and Daisy Tan @DaisyTheBomb (see pic below) and to @jauchr and @deMendoza_Alex and of course to @KaHochberg. This was an amazing collaboration between @mpi_marburg, @hkumed and @QMUL. (10/10)
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Our findings suggest that the evolution of animal stem cells might have involved repurposing pre-existing molecular tools, rather than inventing entirely new mechanisms. (8/n).
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Interestingly, while we found POU proteins in choanoflagellates too, they couldn't induce pluripotency. This suggests that POU factors needed further adaptations to function in animal stem cells.
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This means that these ancient proteins have all the molecular features necessary to act as pioneer factors and induce stemness in mammalian cells. Pretty amazing for a 700-million-year-old protein! .(6/n).
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Using ancestral sequence reconstruction, we "resurrected" ancient metazoan Sox proteins. These reconstructed proteins could also induce pluripotency in mice! .(5/n)
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But here's the really cool part: choanoflagellate Sox proteins can replace mouse Sox2 in reprogramming mouse cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)! .(4/n)
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