How cells regulate protein levels (and fail to do so in cancer)

Cells respond to changes in their environment by remodelling gene expression. Most prior research has focused on gene regulation via transcription and mRNA degradation, but it has recently become clear that regulation of translation and protein degradation also makes a substantial contribution. Despite their importance for cancer biology, these regulatory processes remain poorly understood.

The aim of my lab is to understand the principles, mechanisms and regulators that shape the human proteome at the level of translation and protein degradation. I plan to address this by combining proteomics, transcriptomics and computational approaches, including machine-learning.

Dr Kustatscher is a Group leader and MRC Career Development Fellow at the Insitute for Quantitative Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Edinburgh.

He studied Molecular Biology at the University of Salzburg, Austria, and obtained a PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, working  on epigenetics in the lab of Andreas Ladurner. From 2008 to 2020 he was a Postdoc in Juri Rappsilber’s group at the Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology (WCB) in Edinburgh, combining proteomics and computational approaches to understand how cells regulate mRNA and protein levels from a systems perspective.

Our proteome co-regulation portal (in collaboration with the Rappsilber group): https://www.proteomehd.net