Dr. Lucas Pelkmans was born on September 2nd, 1975 in Nijmegen, The Netherlands and studied Medical Biology at the University of Utrecht. From 1999-2002, he worked towards his Ph.D. degree at the Institute of Biochemistry of the ETH in Zürich. His thesis was awarded with the ETH medal. He then spent two years as an EMBO long-term fellow and Marie Curie fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. In February 2005 he was awarded with an independent research professorship from the Swiss National science Foundation (SNF), and in August 2005 he was awarded 'European Young Investigator' (EURYI).
During his Ph.D. work, Lucas Pelkmans has discovered, by following the infectious entry of Simian Virus 40, an alternative endocytic route that is ligand-activated and involves caveolae and a new type of endocytic organelle that he named caveosomes. He also revealed that this involves a signal transduction event activated by the ligand which leads to a cycle of cortical actin depolymerization/polymerization and recruitment of the endocytic machinery to sites of internalization.
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During his postdoctoral work, Dr. Pelkmans discovered a new principle of ligand sorting in membrane trafficking that is performed by caveolar coats and different from classical membrane coats (e.g. COPs, clathrin). He was also the first to apply a systematic, multi-parameter RNA interference screen in human cells to compare the role of the human complement of kinases (the kinome) in two viral entry pathways via caveolae/raft- and clathrin-mediated endocytosis. This led to numeral insights in infectious virus entry, endocytic pathway activity coordination, and allowed an initial integration of specific endocytic routes with cellular physiology. For example, cell adhesion signaling specifically controls caveolae/raft-mediated endocytosis and mTOR-dependent nutrient sensing controls clathrin-mediated endocytosis. In addition, he applied computational approaches for quantitative analysis of membrane trafficking events recorded with total internal reflection microscopy, revealing kiss-and-run recycling of individual caveolae in epithelial cells and the role of some kinases in recycling dynamics and caveolae coat stability.
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