ERC Advanced Grant aids study on ubiquitin in DNA repair and genome stability

Professor Helle Ulrich, Executive Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) and professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), has been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). She will receive EUR 2.5 million over the next five years to support her research on how a small regulatory protein called ubiquitin contributes to DNA repair and the maintenance of genome stability. ERC Advanced Grants are among the most competitive and prestigious grants awarded to senior scientists in Europe.

Ulrich's team specializes in understanding how cells repair DNA damage caused by genotoxic agents, such as UV radiation or mutagenic chemicals, and ensure that their DNA is accurately replicated when the cell divides. This is crucial for preventing mutations that can cause ageing and cancer. The ERC Advanced Grant will allow her to investigate how a small, highly conserved regulatory protein called ubiquitin contributes to DNA replication and repair. Ubiquitin is a post-translational modifier attached to many proteins, including key proteins in DNA replication and repair pathways),and regulates their interactions, stability and activities in the cell.

Our project builds on a powerful technique we recently developed in our lab to manipulate and target the attachment of ubiquitin to proteins in cells. By purposefully directing the ubiquitylation of a relevant target protein, such as a DNA repair factor, we can watch its effects in isolation from other cellular processes and thereby gain a deeper mechanistic understanding of its function."

Professor Helle Ulrich, Executive Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) and Professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 

Using this new technique, Professor Helle Ulrich and her group hope to decipher how cells direct different DNA replication and repair pathways as well as how this may be dysregulated in disease.

ERC Advanced Grants are awarded to outstanding researchers to enable them to work on projects considered to be highly speculative due to their innovative approach, but which, because of this, can open up access to new approaches in the corresponding research field. Only researchers who have already made significant breakthroughs and have been successfully working for at least ten years at the highest levels of international research are eligible for the grant. The only criteria considered in awarding ERC funding are the academic excellence of the researcher in question and the nature of their research project. An ERC Advanced Grant thus represents an important acknowledgement of the recipient's individual achievements.