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Geneticist and cell biologist
Asifa Akhtar
Born Asifa Akhtar
Alma mater University College London (BSc)
Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now part of The Francis Crick Institute) (PhD) Known for Study of Chromatin Regulation,Basilicata-Akhtar syndrome Awards EMBO membership Scientific career Fields Chromatin Regulation Institutions Max Planck Institute of Immunology and Epigenetics
Doctoral advisor Richard Treisman
Asifa Akhtar is a Pakistani biologist who has made significant contributions to the field of
chromosome regulation.
[1] She is Senior Group Leader and Director of the Department of
Chromatin Regulation at the
Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics .
[2] Akhtar was awarded
EMBO membership in 2013.
[3] She became the first international and female Vice President of the
Max Planck Society 's Biology and Medicine Section in July 2020.
[4]
Academic career
Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, Asifa Akhtar studied for a BSc in biology at
University College London , moving to the
Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now part of the
Francis Crick Institute ) to gain a
PhD for studying
transcriptional regulation in the lab of
Richard Treisman . Akhtar's postdoctoral studies in
chromatin regulation were carried out in
Peter Becker ’s lab Germany, at
European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) , Heidelberg and the Adolf Butenandt Institute, Munich. Akhtar became a group leader at
EMBL in 2001, moving to the
Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics , Freiburg in 2009, where she heads the Akhtar lab.
[5] Akhtar is an editor of the
Journal of Cell Science .
[6] On July 1, 2020, she was elected Vice President of the
Max Planck Society 's Biology and Medicine Section.
Research interests
Asifa Akhtar's research focus is the study of
chromatin and
epigenetic mechanisms. Using
Drosophila melanogaster as an experimental model, Akhtar investigates how
dosage compensation acts in regulation of the
X chromosome .
[7]
[8] Studies have also focused on how the nuclear RNA helicase,
DHX9 , protects the
genome from deleterious effects of
transposon insertion.
[9] More recently Akhtar has investigated how
transcription fidelity is affected by changes in the
nucleosome landscape.
[10]
Awards and honours
References
^
"What 10,000 fruit flies have to tell us about differences between the sexes" . ScienceDaily . 19 July 2012. Retrieved 2019-06-03 .
^
"Management Board" . www.ie-freiburg.mpg.de . Retrieved 2019-05-11 .
^
a
b
"EMBO announces new members for 2013" . EMBO . Archived from
the original on April 17, 2016. Retrieved 2019-05-11 .
^
"New team, new Ideas" . mpg.de . 1 July 2020. Retrieved 2020-07-05 .
^
"The logistics on the drosophila X chromosome" . phys.org . 2 October 2015. Retrieved 2019-06-03 .
^ Way, Michael (2019-01-15).
"New Editor on Journal of Cell Science" . J Cell Sci . 132 (2): jcs229740.
doi :
10.1242/jcs.229740 .
ISSN
0021-9533 .
PMID
30670474 .
^ Valsecchi, Claudia Isabelle Keller; Basilicata, M. Felicia; Semplicio, Giuseppe; Georgiev, Plamen; Gutierrez, Noel Marie; Akhtar, Asifa (2018).
"Facultative dosage compensation of developmental genes on autosomes in Drosophila and mouse embryonic stem cells" . Nature Communications . 9 (1): 3626.
Bibcode :
2018NatCo...9.3626V .
doi :
10.1038/s41467-018-05642-2 .
ISSN
2041-1723 .
PMC
6128902 .
PMID
30194291 .
^ Akhtar, Asifa; Steinmetz, Lars M.; Luscombe, Nicholas M.; Manke, Thomas; Raja, Sunil; Wei, Wu; Conrad, Thomas; Ramírez, Fidel; Filipe Tavares Cadete (June 2016). "Functional interplay between MSL1 and CDK7 controls RNA polymerase II Ser5 phosphorylation". Nature Structural & Molecular Biology . 23 (6): 580–589.
doi :
10.1038/nsmb.3233 .
hdl :
11858/00-001M-0000-002C-A8D5-0 .
ISSN
1545-9985 .
PMID
27183194 .
S2CID
20161552 .
^ Akhtar, Asifa; Backofen, Rolf; Manke, Thomas; Mittler, Gerhard; Pessoa Rodrigues, Cecilia; Bhardwaj, Vivek; Maticzka, Daniel; Ilık, İbrahim Avşar; Aktaş, Tuğçe (April 2017). "DHX9 suppresses RNA processing defects originating from the Alu invasion of the human genome". Nature . 544 (7648): 115–119.
Bibcode :
2017Natur.544..115A .
doi :
10.1038/nature21715 .
hdl :
11858/00-001M-0000-002E-85F6-E .
ISSN
1476-4687 .
PMID
28355180 .
S2CID
4402863 .
^ Lam, Kin Chung; Chung, Ho-Ryun; Semplicio, Giuseppe; Iyer, Shantanu S.; Gaub, Aline; Bhardwaj, Vivek; Holz, Herbert; Georgiev, Plamen; Akhtar, Asifa (2019-04-01).
"The NSL complex-mediated nucleosome landscape is required to maintain transcription fidelity and suppression of transcription noise" . Genes & Development . 33 (7–8): 452–465.
doi :
10.1101/gad.321489.118 .
ISSN
0890-9369 .
PMC
6446542 .
PMID
30819819 .
^
"EMBL news letter 2008" (PDF) .
^
"Prizewinners of the Feldberg Foundation" . www.feldbergfoundation.org . Archived from
the original on 2019-05-11. Retrieved 2019-05-11 .
^
"Winners of the Leibniz Prize 2021" . Leopoldina . Retrieved 2021-02-10 .
^
"Asifa Akhtar" . German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Retrieved 26 May 2021 .
External links
Asifa Akhtar the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics.