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Marina Serna, researcher twice awarded the ‘José Tormo’ award. Credit: Esther Sánchez / CNIO
Serna receives for the second time the 'José Tormo' award for discovering the structure of essential proteins for the cell
It is the award of the Spanish Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM) to young researchers in structural biology, the area that studies the shape of proteins
Serna has contributed to explaining how human cells build their microtubules. It is a key process and understanding it will help in learning how to treat, in the future, diseases ranging from cancer to neurodevelopmental disorders
roteins are the molecules responsible for cells, and therefore the whole organism, to work. They perform a myriad of different tasks, and they do so by ‘fitting’ into each other, like pieces of a tiny three-dimensional Tetris, on an atomic scale. So, to understand how proteins – and cells, and the organism – work, we need to find their shape, their structure. This is what Marina Serna, a researcher at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) has been doing since 2017.
“I have always been interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms that allow important functions to be carried out in the cell, such as cell division,” says Serna. “To achieve this, we need to know the structure of the proteins involved, and that’s what I dedicate my efforts to in the lab.”
The ‘José Tormo’ prize that the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM) has just awarded Serna recognizes his role in answering a question that has been hanging in the air for years: how microtubules begin to build when a cell divides. Microtubules are tiny tubes (nanometers wide) that give shape to the cell itself, and are key to cell division, among other tasks.
Serna, together with colleagues from the Structural Biology Program at the CNIO, the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the Spanish National Research Council (IBMB-CSIC), achieved the equivalent to assembling a film that shows on an atomic scale how human cells initiate the formation of their microtubules. The study, published this year in the journal Science, solves a long-standing problem and lays the groundwork for future advances in the treatment of multiple diseases.
This is the second time that Marina Serna wins the José Tormo Award, an exceptional fact that, for Óscar Llorca, Director of the Structural Biology Program at the CNIO, “speaks of her quality as a researcher”.
On the previous occasion, the winning work revealed the structure of proteins involved in the ‘spliceosome’, a macromolecular mega-complex responsible for cellular splicing and alternative splicing, an extraordinarily complex process that determines the correct execution of the orders inscribed in the cell’s DNA, in the genetic material.
In both investigations, Serna used the technique of cryo-electron microscopy, which makes it possible to resolve atomic details in proteins. “The great challenge facing this technique is related to the development of tools to study the dynamics of molecules in action, an area in which this year’s award-winning work has particularly excelled,” explains Serna.