Pelkmans, Lucas, Prof.

Lucas Pelkmans studied Medical Biology at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands, and obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the ETH Zurich in 2002. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. In 2005, he accepted an assistant professorship at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology of the ETH Zurich. Lucas has been a fellow of the European Molecular Biology Organization and a Marie Curie Fellow. He was awarded with the ETH medal for best Ph.D. thesis in Biology in 2002, was in the top 10 of most-cited cell biologists between 2000 and 2002, has been awarded European Young Investigator, and was nominated by MIT Technology Review in the top 35 of the world's leading Young Innovators under 35 years of age. In 2007, he co-founded the company 3-V Biosciences, which develops new antiviral drugs targeting the host instead of the pathogen.

Research in his laboratory covers a broad area of molecular cell biology in mammalian cells. In the past few years, it has taken a particular interest in the use of data-driven modeling of multivariate measurements obtained with quantitative single-cell imaging of large populations of cells to uncover mechanisms by which cells couple and coordinate their activities. Using such an approach, his lab has recently discovered that the cell-to-cell variability of complex activities in identical human cells is largely deterministic, and follows basic predictive principles (Snijder et al., Nature 2009). Further unraveling the molecular and mechanistic basis of these principles is becoming a major interest of his lab.

Selected reading:

Snijder, B., Sacher, R., Rämö, P., Damm, E-M., Liberali, P., Pelkmans, L. Population context determines cell-to-cell variability in endocytosis and virus infection. Nature Aug 26 [Epub ahead of print] (2009).

Liberali, P., Rämö, P., Pelkmans, L. Protein kinases: Starting a molecular systems view of endocytosis. Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology 24, 501-523 (2008)

Pelkmans, L. and Zerial M. Kinase-regulated quantal coat assemblies and kiss-and-run recycling of caveolae. Nature 436, 128-133 (2005).

Pelkmans, L., Fava, E., Hannus, M., Habermann, B., Krausz, E. and Zerial, M. Genome-wide analysis of human kinases in clathrin- and caveolae/raft-mediated endocytosis. Nature 436, 78-86 (2005).

Pelkmans, L., Bürli, T., Zerial, M. and Helenius, A. Caveolin-stabilized membrane domains as multifunctional transport and sorting devices in endocytic membrane traffic.
Cell 118, 767-780 (2004).

Pelkmans, L., Püntener, D and Helenius, A. Local actin polymerization and dynamin recruitment in SV40-induced internalization of caveolae. Science 296, 535-539 (2002).

Pelkmans, L., Kartenbeck, J and Helenius, A. Caveolar endocytosis of Simian Virus 40 reveals a new two-step vesicular transport pathway to the ER. Nature Cell Biology 3, 473-483 (2001).