Members

Chuna carried out his doctoral studies at the University of Münster in Germany and his postdoctoral training at the same university as well as at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. In 2009, he became a Group Leader at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, University of Copenhagen. In 2013 he was appointed a professor in proteomics and cell signaling at the same institute. Chuna is interested in investigating the dynamics of protein posttranslational modifications, in particular of lysine acetylation and ubiquitylation, in cell signaling networks using quantitative mass spectrometry-based approaches.

Brian obtained his PhD in December 2006 from the University of California, Berkeley where he used biochemical, cell, and molecular methods to study P element transposition, DNA repair, and the Blooms syndrome helicase. He fled academia and moved to Denmark in 2007, where he spent two years as a research scientist at DanDrit biotech, a small company that developed immune therapy for cancer using dendritic cells. In 2009 he fled biotech and returned to academia as postdoctoral researcher in the group of Chunaram Choudhary. In mass spectrometry-based proteomics Brian has found his calling. His work has focused on unravelling the mechanisms and fundamental properties of lysine acetylation. He is interested in developing and applying quantitative proteomics strategies to investigate the basic properties of acetylation and other similar modifications. In April 2015 Brian was promoted to an Associate Professor (senior scientist) position in the Choudhary group.

Rajat was born and brought up in New Delhi, India and did his Masters in Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Bombay (India).  For his Masters’ dissertation, he worked on elucidating the role of glycation of tau protein in protein misfolding in Alzheimer’s disease. Subsequently, he joined Prof. Ulrich Hartl´s laboratory the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (Munich, Germany) to pursue PhD. During his doctoral studies, he developed novel sensors based on firefly luciferase enzyme to measure changes in protein homeostasis in a wide range of experimental systems, including cell and organisms model of stress, neurodegenerative disease, and aging. His work has also uncovered a new role of DnaJB1 chaperone in delivering cytosolic misfolded proteins to the nucleus for degradation and has facilitated our understanding about how different components of the protein quality control machinery participate with each other to shape and remodel cellular proteome under different conditions. Rajat is interested in investigating ubiquitylation signaling using cell biology and proteomics technologies.

Thomas studied Biochemistry at the University of Regensburg and subsequently obtained his PhD from the ETH Zurich. During his PhD thesis in the group of Prof. Ulrike Kutay, Thomas mainly used microscopy-based high throughput RNAi screening to unravel how ribosomes are produced in human cells. Thereafter, Thomas joined the lab of Prof. Patrick Cramer at the LMU Munich to apply similar techniques to study how multi-subunit RNA polymerases are assembled. Since 2013, Thomas works as a Postdoc in the lab of Prof. Chuna Choudhary combining systems-wide quantitative mass spectrometry-based analysis of the human ubiquitin systems with latest genome editing techniques.

Takeo studied medicine at the Kyoto University. After 2 years' work as an intern, he enroled for a PhD program at the Kyoto University under the supervision of Prof. Shunichi Takeda. During his PhD he studied the bypass capability of human replicative DNA polymerase delta across the UV damaged sites, the role of XPF, a structure-specific nuclease, on the DNA double strand break repair, and the differential role of ubiquitin ligases RNF8 and RNF168. In June 2014 he joined Prof. Chuna Choudhary´s group and currently he is applying quantitative proteomics to study protein-protein interactions.

Magda studied biotechnology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. She obtained her PhD degree under the supervision of Prof. Roland Kanaar and Prof. Jan Hoeimakers at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. During her PhD studies she investigated the roles of Rad17, Mus81, and Rad51AP1 in DNA damage response. She continued the work on Rad51AP1 in the lab of Dr. Mauro Modesti at CNRS in Marseille, France. After that she joined the lab of Prof. Johannes Walter at Harvard Medical School. There she used Xenopus leavis egg extracts to study the mechanism of translesion DNA synthesis during repair of interstrand DNA crosslinks. In July 2015 she joined the lab of Prof. Chuna Choudhary.

Lidiya studied molecular biology at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria. She continued her education in The Netherlands, joining the research TopMaster program Biomolecular sciences at the University of Groningen. There, under the supervision of Prof. Bert Poolman and Prof. Oscar Kuipers, she investigated the cell response to membrane protein overproduction applying transcriptomics and proteomics approaches. With a growing fascination with epigenetics, her PhD work delved into exploring the mechanisms of early life metabolic programming using animal models. With guidance from Prof. Uwe Tietge and Prof. Henkjan Verkade at the Dept. of Pediatrics in the University Medical Center Groningen, she specifically addressed the impact of early life oxidative stress and cholesterol availability on the predisposition to adult cardio-metabolic disease. Her work provided novel mechanistic insights by identifying the key chromatin changes associated with insult exposure and their role in the balance between health and disease. In November 2017 she joined the group of prof. Chuna Choudhary.

Gabriela studied biotechnology at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. There, she began her adventure with mass spectrometry-based proteomics technologies. She gained experience during internships at MaxPlanck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany and Karolinska University, Stockholm, Sweden. During her Master studies she investigated the antipsychotic drug molecular mechanism of action. In 2017 she was accepted into the CPH Bioscience PhD Programme and joined Chuna Choudhary’s lab. Currently Gabriela is interested in DUB-regulated ubiquitylation signaling.

Rebeca studied Technical Education in Pathological Anatomy and Cytology in Madrid, Spain. She worked as laboratory technician in the group of Prof. Oscar Fernández-Capetillo at Spanish National Cancer Research Center being involved in different projects focused on dna damage and mouse models. Later she joined the Lab of Prof. Jeremy A. Daniel at NNF Center for Protein Research in Copenhagen to participate in the study of chromatin function, using the class-switch recombination reaction given specifically in B cells as their main tool. Since 2017 she is working in the group of Prof. Chuna Choudhary.