Welcome to the Boland lab!

We are a friendly, focused and enthusiastic group working at the intersection of Structural Biology, Molecular Biology and Cell Biology. We leverage the latest developments in Structural Biology, and here in particular cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) with complementary biophysical techniques (proteomics, light-microscopy, microfluidics, etc.), to adress complex biological questions in the field of cell cycle regulation and cell signaling.

LATEST NEWS

OUR GROUP IN OCT'23

WELCOME TO OUR GROUPS, ELDA!

Nov'23

Elda Bauda will join our group as a PostDoc jointly associated with the group of Robbie Loewith working on multi-protein complexes involved in energy metabolism! We are very much looking forward to your arrival in December!

CONGRATULATIONS DR. ANNA HÖFLER!

Nov '23

Anna brilliantly defended her PhD thesis. We wish you all the best for your future endeavours.

REVIEW HUMAN SEPARASE REGULATION

May '23

Our review on "The molecular mechanisms of human separase regulation" is now published at Biochemical Society Transactions.
We summarise recent structural and functional data on separase inhibition, and discuss new ideas how phosphorylation of separase and its substrates may control protease activity.

Please click the image for more information.

ILSE SCHAEFFNER HAS BEEN AWARDED A FULBRIGHT SCHOLARSHIP

April '23

Ilse Schaeffner will join our group as a Fulbright scholar in September this year. Currently, Ilse is working in the group of Prof. Michael J. Eck at Harvard Medical School. During her internship she will study proteins involved in cell division and cell signalling using cryoEM.

Congratulation Ilse on winning such a prestigious fellowship and we are looking forward to your start.

APC/C HIGH RESOLUTION STRUCTURES MANUSCRIPT NOW ONLINE

September '23

Our new work on APC/C regulation revealed by high resolution cryo-EM structures together with the groups of Leifu Chang and David Barford is now on BioRxiv. Congratulations to Anna Höfler, Jun Yu and all other authors. The manuscript can be found here:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.31.555674v1

RESEARCH PROJECTS

Our Current Focus

STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF CELL CYCLE REGULATORY PROTEINS

MEMBRANE PROTEIN BIOLOGY

UNDERSTANDING THE MOLECULAR BASIS OF METABOLIC PROTEIN CLUSTERS

GROUP PHOTO (in our EM facility...)

bottom - from left to right:

Anna HÖFLER, Lina POULAIN, Margherita BOTTO.

top - from left to right:

Jun YU, Andreas BOLAND, Yvan PFISTER, Ilse SCHAEFFNER, Sophia SCHMIDT, Xuefeng ZHANG, and Li YAO

Details to each lab member

PUBLICATIONS

Selected publications (Boland group)

New structural features of the APC/C revealed by high resolution cryo-EM structures of apo-APC/C and the APC/C:CDH1:EMI1 complex. Höfler A, Yu J, Yang J, Zhang Z, Chang L, Grime GW, Garman EF, Boland A and Barford D. BioRxiv (and in revision).

The molecular mechanisms of human separase regulation.

Yu J, Morgan DO, Boland A.Biochem Soc Transactions. 2023 Jun 28

CEMIP (HYBID, KIAA1199): structure, function and expression in health and disease.
Spataro S, Guerra C, Cavalli A, Sgrignani J, Sleeman J, Poulain L, Boland A, Scapozza L, Moll S, Prunotto M.
FEBS Journal. 2022 Aug 23

Hepatic S100A9-TLR4-mTORC1 axis normalizes diabetic ketogenesis.
Ursino G, Ramadori G, Höfler A, Odouard S, Teixeira PS, Visentin F, Veyrat-Durebex C, Lucibello G, Firnkes R, Ricci S, Vianna CR, Jia L, Dirlewanger M, Klee P, Elmquist JK, Roth J, Vogl T, Schwitzgebel VM, Jornayvaz FR, Boland A, Coppari R.
Nature Communications. 2022 13(1):4107

Structural basis of human separase regulation by securin and Cdk1-cyclin B1.
Yu J, Raia P, Ghent CM, Raisch T, Sadian Y, Cavadini S, Sabale PM, Barford D, Raunser S, Morgan DO, Boland A.
Nature. 2021 Aug;596(7870):138-142.

All our work is open access.