Lars Jansen's work on the formation of the centromere, a key cellular structure in powering and controlling chromosome segregation and accurate cell division, has just earned him a paper in Nature Cell Biology and a prestigious EMBO installation grant, of 50,000 euro per year, for a maximum of five years. Lars Jansen moved from California to the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), in Portugal, last year to head the Epigenetic Mechanisms group.

Catalysts assist in chemical reactions without undergoing any alteration of their own. In the cells of living organisms, proteins perform this important function. They carry out the metabolism fundamental to all living processes. Proteins are instrumental in cellular respiration, they for instance reduce oxygen to water and oxidize food into carbon dioxide. This releases the energy that makes life possible at all. Proteins cannot perform these functions on their own.

A similarity in brain disturbance between insects and people suffering from migraines, stroke and epilepsy points the way toward new drug therapies to address these conditions. Queen's University biologists studying the locust have found that these human disorders are linked by a brain disturbance during which nerve cells shut down. This also occurs in locusts when they go into a coma after exposure to extreme conditions such as high temperatures or lack of oxygen.