Anhydrobiosis – cheating death and telling the tale

Dr Takekazu Kunieda received his PhD degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences for his study in regeneration biology using flies from University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1998. His major research interest is in the elucidation of extraordinary (super-human) abilities shown by selected animals, such as regeneration and extraordinary stress resistance. He started the molecular analyses on the extremotolerant ability of tardigrades in 2004, and his group has identified various tardigrade-unique tolerance proteins, including DNA protection protein. He also led the genome project of an extremotolerant tardigrade since 2008 and provided the high-quality genome sequences in 2016. He became an assistant professor in 2007 and then an associate professor in 2018, working in University of Tokyo.

After graduating from Iwate University, Japan, Takahiro Kikawada worked at the National Institute of Sericological and Entomological Sciences (NISES), Tsukuba, Japan as a researcher (1994–2001). He next became a principal researcher at Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, NARO (NIAS), Tsukuba, Japan (2001-present). Takahiro Kikawada obtained his PhD in 2009 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. Since 2015, he has been concurrently appointed Associate Professor of The University of Tokyo. His current research is focused on molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics of the anhydrobiotic African midge, Polypedilum vanderplanki. He was the first to clone and characterise insect LEA proteins (2006) and the facilitated trehalose transporter TRET1 (2007) from the midge. He led the international consortium of the anhydrobiotic midge genome project (2010–2014). Recently, he developed long-term storage at room temperature of desiccation-labile enzyme in the dry-preservable cells derived from the midge (2017). Now he is exploring not only the mechanisms but also application potential of anhydrobiosis.

Dorothea Bartels is C4 professor of the Institute of Molecular Physiology and Biotechnology of Plants (IMBIO). She received her PhD from the Institute of Botany, University of Hannover in 1979. She was nominated as a senior research scientist at the Max-Planck-Institut für Züchtungsforschung in 1986 to investigate the molecular basis of desiccation in plants. Dorothea Bartels started her research on the molecular mechanism of drought stress and cold stress in barley and model plants after receiving her Habilitation at the University of Hannover. She was appointed as Professor of Botany (C3) in 1997 and Professor of Botany (C4) in 2003 at the University of Bonn. She became Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science in 2005 until 2015. She had a professorship in Ecology and Physiology of Plants at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from 2001 to 2003. She was appointed an EMBO member and gave the Theodor Bücher Lecture at the FEBS meeting in Lisbon. Since 2004, Professor Bartels has served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Planta. Over the last 20 years Professor Bartels has made significant contributions by studying regulatory pathways controlling desiccation tolerance in the resurrection plant Craterostigma, she has discovered several regulatory molecules involved in osmotic stress.

Dr Christopher Prior is an applied mathematician with an interest in entangled bundles of curves and tubes. In particular he seeks to understand how this entanglement drives the behaviour of the physical systems he models such as bio-polymers, proteins, and magnetic flux ropes. Christopher obtained his PhD from UCL studying the writhing of curves and its applications, then, after a post-doctoral position at Oxford University, he obtained the Addison Wheeler fellowship at Durham university to set up a number of projects including the topological modelling of emerging magnetic flux ropes in the Sun's atmosphere and a novel method for identifying protein structures ab-initio from small angle scattering data. He has now taken up a permanent position in the mathematical sciences department at Durham.

Professor Rohit Pappu received his PhD in Biological Physics from Tufts University in 1996. Following two postdoctoral fellowships Professor Pappu joined the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. His main research interests, driven by a combined use of theory, computer simulations, and experiments, are focused on quantitative descriptions of conformations, interactions, and phase transitions of intrinsically disordered proteins.

Simon Alberti is Professor of Cellular Biochemistry at the Technical University Dresden, Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC), Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering (CMCB). He received his PhD in 2004 in Biology from the University of Bonn, Germany. In 2005 he joined the lab of Susan Lindquist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (Cambridge, USA), where he worked on prions and amyloids. In 2010 he initiated his independent career as a group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, where he studied proteostasis and the molecular principles underlying cytoplasmic organisation. His recent work shows that cells form many membraneless compartments via a biophysical process known as phase separation. Importantly, the ability to form such compartments becomes detrimental with increasing age, because compartment-forming proteins tend to misfold and aggregate and cause age-related neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS.

Dr Chiara Boschetti completed her PhD in Animal Biology at the University of Milan, Italy, during which she started studying the ‘evolutionary scandalous’ bdelloid rotifers, small invertebrates which reproduce exclusively asexually and can survive complete desiccation. After a visiting scholarship at Imperial College London, UK, Chiara moved to the University of Cambridge, UK, where she studied the effects of lack of water at the molecular and cellular level in both desiccation-resistant and desiccation-sensitive organisms. She contributed to the first studies of comparative genomics in bdelloid rotifers and discovered that the high levels of expressed foreign genes (incorporated by horizontal gene transfer) in bdelloids’ genomes can further improve their stress resistance. Chiara then moved to Plymouth as a Lecturer in Biological Sciences where she started studying other stress-resistant organisms as well to further understand how they can survive extreme environmental conditions.

Justin’s research has garnered an international reputation for innovative biophysical chemistry approaches based on combining mass measurement with other experimental methods, simulations, and quantitative thermodynamic and kinetic analyses. This has allowed him and his group to change our thinking as to how proteins assemble, interact, and even evolve. Their insights have been important to understanding molecular chaperone (mal)function in humans, and the stress tolerance of plants. After a degree in Chemistry at the University of Oxford, Justin obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge. He was awarded fellowships from the Medical Research Council and Royal Society, and appointed to faculty at the University of Oxford in 2012 as an Associate Professor in Biophysical Chemistry, and Tutorial Fellow in Physical Chemistry at University College. Justin has been recognised by the Cell Stress Society International with the Alfred Tissières Award, the Howard Prize Lecture from the Biophysical Sciences Institute at Durham, and the Norman Heatley Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2019.

In 2016, Dr Wade Zeno received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Davis, where he worked under Professor Marjorie Longo. At UC Davis, he characterised protein and lipid derived biomaterials and studied the biophysics of lipid membranes. After finishing his PhD, he joined Professor Jeanne Stachowiak’s group at the University of Texas at Austin as a postdoctoral researcher. Here, he studies protein–lipid interactions at membrane surfaces. Specifically, they have discovered novel mechanisms of membrane curvature sensing performed by intrinsically disordered proteins. These findings yield a myriad of avenues for exploring disordered proteins in biological systems, as this field is still in its infancy. In August 2020, he will begin an assistant professorship at the University of Southern California in the Chemical Engineering Department. There, he will investigate the biophysical role of intrinsically disordered proteins in membrane remodelling and develop biomaterials that exploit the functionality of biological membranes.

Serena Carra is an Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, where she studies the protein quality control and how deficiencies in this system lead to cell dysfunction and disease. In particular, she is trying to understand whether and how the protein quality control system participates in regulating the properties and functions of membraneless organelles. Finally, she is interested in understanding how mutations in specific chaperones lead to disease and whether this relates to the altered functionality of specific membraneless organelles.

For over a decade Dr Thomas Boothby has studied how rare, but widespread, organisms are able to survive extreme water-loss. His work and others have highlighted the importance of an enigmatic group of proteins known as intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) in mediating desiccation tolerance in organisms spanning all kingdoms of life. Many biomedical products such as vaccines are only effective is produced, transported, and stored using a ‘cold-chain’ of refrigerators and freezers. In remote or developing parts of the world, the need to maintain this cold-chain is both a logistical and economic hurdle. Dr Boothby’s laboratory studies the fundamental science behind desiccation tolerance and IDPs and leverages this information to develop novel strategies for stabilising biomedically relevant material (vaccines, tissues, etc) in a dry state, thus reducing our reliance on the cold-chain to maintain high standards for global health.

Marc Knight is currently the Chair in Plant Cell Signalling at the Department of Biosciences, Durham University, UK, since March 2006, when he moved from the University of Oxford. He earned his BSc in Botany with honours from the University of Durham (1986) and then PhD in plant biochemistry from the University of Glasgow (1990). He then undertook postdoctoral studies at the University of Edinburgh in the lab of Professor Tony Trewavas (1989–1993) which established his research interest in calcium signalling. In 1993 he was awarded a University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society to establish his own research group at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford, where he developed his interest in cold hardiness. Marc has published over 80 peer-reviewed research papers, accounting for over 15,500 citations. His current research interests are the role of calcium signalling in conveying information to regulate stress gene expression, and the molecular/mechanistic basis of plant freezing tolerance.

Jill Farrant is a full Professor and holds a Research Chair in ‘Systems Biology Studies on Plant Desiccation Tolerance for Food Security’ in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Cape Town. She is an acknowledged world leader in the field of plant desiccation tolerance (holding a rarely given A rated status by the South African National Research Foundation), working on both seeds and resurrection plants. Her fundamental research involves use of a systems biology multi-disciplinary approach to understand the protection mechanisms (and regulation thereof) laid down in vegetative tissue of resurrection plants, with the ultimate aim of using key protectants identified to make extremely drought tolerant crops. She has received considerable recognition for her research, having achieved 10 national and international awards, including the L’Oreal-UNESCO award in life sciences (2012) that ‘recognizes women whose exceptional careers in science have opened up new and sometimes revolutionary ways of improving human well-being’. Farrant is passionate about promotion of plant science to the public where she particularly emphasises the importance of water to our planet. Her work has been the subject of several documentaries due to it strategic importance in its potential for providing food security under drought prone conditions.

The VanBuren lab integrates comparative genomic, quantitative genetics, and evolutionary approaches to understand the genetic basis of natural adaptations to drought stress in plants. Their work centres on the evolution of CAM photosynthesis and the extreme desiccation tolerance of resurrection plants. Resurrection plants endure a dormant, desiccated state in regions that receive no rainfall for 6-9 months and an optimized photosynthetic pathway allows CAM plants to thrive in arid environments. The group’s goal is to use these evolutionary innovations to engineer improved stress tolerance and resilience into crop plants. To explore these adaptations, they leverage comparative systems spanning the land plant phylogeny.