AWARDS: IBMC researchers among recipients of FLAD awards

The FLAD Life Science 2020 Award is handed out on January 7^th in Lisbon and acknowledges the work of Hélder Maiato’s team on the chromosomal “navigation system” in cell division.

2015 marks the first edition of the FLAD Life Science 2020 Award, a prize endorsed by the Luso-American Development Foundation (Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento or FLAD). The purpose is to reward research projects in the field of Life Sciences and a 400 thousand Euros prize is assigned to both winners in each category. 

Hélder Maiato, head of the Chromosome Instability & Dynamics group, explains that his team attempts to understand what’s behind the chromosomal “navigation system” at the exact moment the cell divides, as well as how the genetic information is distributed between the two daughter cells.

“Before the chromosomes are distributed, they have to align along the cell’s ‘equator’, right in the middle of the cell, but we don’t know why and how they head to this ‘equator’”, adds Hélder Maiato.

The chromosomes follow some sort of ‘roadways’ to get there and scatter between the daughter cells during the division process. Those pathways are signaled and it’s those signals that Hélder Maiato and his team are striving to unravel.

So far, the research group is convinced that the ‘signals’ stem from “small changes” at a cellular level, which “aren’t coded within the genes” and that serve as a chromosomal “navigation system”.

Hélder Maiato also points out that these ‘roadways’ act as the cell’s scaffolding, which is comprised by microtubules that, after being coded in the genes, “form proteins, i.e. the structural basis” of the scaffolding. Said microtubules “are entangled in the cell division and will interact with the chromosomes in order to lead and distribute them between the daughter cells”. However, Hélder Maiato continues, the microtubules, “in spite of being coded in the genes, also suffer minor modifications that aren’t inscribed in the DNA” regardless of being equally important to the biological process.

Studying this cell mechanism might be the gateway that leads to a better understanding of why some the ‘roadways’ used by the chromosomes are “misshapen in some forms of cancer”, concluded Hélder Maiato.

Apart from Hélder Maiato’s team, a research group from the University of Pennsylvania was distinguished in the category of basic research.

The ceremony takes place at the headquarters of FLAD and it’s presided by the Portuguese Prime Minister.