Peptide splicing - Take the red pill, stay in Wonderland and discover how deep the rabbit-hole goes

Peptide splicing - Take the red pill, stay in Wonderland and discover how deep the rabbit-hole goes

Speaker: Juliane Liepe, Max Planck Institute

Host: Dr Martin Eichmann

Speaker bio: 

I studied Biochemistry (2004-2008) at the University of Potsdam (Germany). During this time, I also studied two years of Mathematics. I completed my studies in Biochemistry with my diploma thesis titled 'Identification and characterisation of proteasome-catalyzed spliced peptides' at the University Hospital Charité Berlin.

In 2009, I joined the Wellcome Trust PhD program at Imperial College London under the supervision of Professor Michael Stumpf working on the project titled 'Novel descriptive and model-based statistical approaches in immunology and signal transduction'.

After completing my PhD I was awarded the NC3Rs David Sainsbury Research Fellowship, continuing my work on understanding signalling processes involved in the innate immune response.

During my time at Imperial College London, I worked on the analysis of life-fluorescent microscopy images describing innate immune cell migration during acute inflammation by developing and applying automated image processing tools. Random walk models and statistical inference approaches were used to elucidate the signalling cascades during wound healing. I furthermore developed Bayesian approaches for model selection and parameter inference as well as Bayesian experimental design with applications in signal transduction and in immunology.

After studying the signalling processes of the innate immune response for several years, I became interested again in the adaptive immune response and more specifically, the role of proteasome-catalyzed peptide splicing during antigen presentation.

In 2017, I became the Head of the Quantitative and Systems Biology Group at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen (Germany) where, together with my new research team, we continue the research on the proteasome.