Gurevich Lab

Education
First joined the lab as a senior in Biochemistry at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany. Graduated in 2014 with B.Sc. in Biochemistry.
Currently: master program in Biochemistry at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany

Research Description

Henriette was a third-year undergraduate student, majoring in Biochemistry at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany. She joined us in August 2013 through the DAAD RISE Weltweit program. She was interested in understanding the mechanistic basis of arrestin-3-mediated JNK activation. Under the supervision of Dr. Xuanzhi Zhan, she was elucidating the molecular mechanism of the “smallest MAPK” scaffold, T1A peptide. To our surprise, this 25-residue element of arrestin-3 acts as a scaffold, facilitating the activation of JNK3 in cells. Henriette was identifying the critical residues on T1A that are essential for JNK3 activation, as well as for its interactions with JNK3 and its upstream kinases ASK1, MKK4, and MKK7. Henriette made significant progress in the first two weeks, which lead us to engineer even smaller T1A-based scaffolding peptides that she is testing. Elucidating the structural basis of T1A-mediated scaffolding will provide the valuable mechanistic insights into arrestin-3 mediated MAPK signaling. Short peptide scaffolds will be powerful molecular tools to manipulate the activation of JNK family kinases, which implies tremendous therapeutic potential.

Currently Henriette is a Master’s Student at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany. As part of her Master’s work, she continued her work on the arrestin-3 interactions with JNK family kinases and their upstream activators in September – December of 2014.

Publications from the lab

Henriette published one review, one research paper, and two additional research papers are in preparation.

Papers from the lab

Zhan, X., Stoy, H., Kaoud, T.S., Perry, N.A., Chen, Q., Perez, A., Els-Heindl, S., Slagis, J.V., Iverson, T.M., Beck-Sickinger, A.G., Gurevich, E.V., Dalby, K.N., Gurevich, V.V. Peptide mini-scaffold facilitates JNK3 activation in cells. Sci Rep 6, 21025; doi: 10.1038/srep21025 (2016).

Stoy, H. and Gurevich, V.V. How genetic errors in GPCRs affect their function: possible therapeutic strategies. Genes Dis 2, 108-132 (2015).