Last Friday, our talented PhD student Sofia successfully and gracefullly defended her thesis on “The functional role of the MUC17-based glycocalyx”!
Sofia’s opponent was Associate Professor Karin Strijbis from Utrecht University.
Congratulations, Dr. Sofia Jäverfelt!
The interactive exhibition Humans opened last week at the science center Universeum in Gothenburg.
Our lab and other colleagues in the Mucin Biology Groups have curated images, movies and reading material for the exhibition that takes you on a journey through the gastrointestinal tract, where you encounter the fascinating world of mucins, mucus and gut bacteria!
More info about Humans and opening hours here.
Thaher will deliver the commencement speach for the graduating Pharmacy class of 2023.
The ceremony takes place on Thursday June 8th, 10 am, at the Vasaparken main building, Universitetsplatsen 1.
Thaher will speak at the Scientific Spring Meeting of the Dutch Society of Medical Microbiology (NVMM) and the Royal Dutch Society of Microbiology (KNVM), held on April 4 and 5, 2023 in Congrescentre Papendal, Arnhem.
Thaher’s talk entitled “From infancy to adulthood: Exploring the barrier function of membrane mucins in the small intestine” is scheduled on Tuesday April 4th, 2 pm.
Read the full program here.
Interested in our research? Read the latest feature about our research on membrane mucins.
”Fundamentally, we want to understand the principles of human coexistence with trillions of bacteria in our intestines. We as humans are deeply dependent on bacteria, the gut microbiota, for our health. Paradoxically, the same bacteria can turn into vicious enemies if they are not kept in check. Our way of controlling the microbiota is to establish various biological and physical barriers between our tissues and the bacteria. My lab studies the function of membrane mucins that cover the whole length of our small and large intestines. The first membrane mucins were described almost 50 years ago, but their function is still an enigma. We have recently shown that membrane mucins play an important role in protecting our intestinal cells against bacteria. Now, we are starting to realize that they play a much broader role in our coexistence with bacteria. For example, membrane mucins are also present in breast milk, where they present thousands of sugar molecules to the gut microbiota of the infant. These sugar molecules could help select beneficial bacteria or capture and eliminate harmful microbes.”
Read the full feature here.
Human tissue surfaces are coated with mucins, a family of macromolecular sugar-laden proteins serving diverse functions from lubrication to the formation of selective biochemical barriers against harmful microorganisms and molecules. Mucin proteins carry long stretches of tandemly repeated sequences that undergo extensive O-linked glycosylation to form linear mucin domains. The repetitive nature of mucin domains makes them prone to recombination and renders their genetic sequences particularly difficult to read with standard sequencing technologies. Our recent work, published in PLOS ONE, leveraged a recent human genome assembly to characterize a previously unmapped MUC3B gene located at the q22 locus on chromosome 7, within a cluster of four structurally related membrane mucin genes that we name the MUC3 cluster.
This work was a collaboration with Tiange Lang at Big Data Decision Institution, Jinan University, China.
Read our paper here.
Compete genomic, mRNA and protein sequences for mucin genes MUC3A, MUC3B, MUC12 and MUC17 in the human MUC3 cluster can be downloaded from the Mucin database (v 2.2).
Elena was awarded a Bollan stipend. From right: Anandi, Elena, Thaher, and Sofia.
Elena has been awarded the Elisabet "Bollan" Lindén Stipend from the Core facilities at Sahlgrenska Academy. Congratulations, Elena!
Project details:
“Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is caused by bacteria that reach intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) and thereby trigger inflammation. We recently discovered that membrane mucin MUC17 prevents bacterial attachment to IECs. However, the role of MUC17 in IBD and in mucosal defenses remains unexplored. We have now developed a new Muc17 knockout mouse that helps us understand how IECs combat harmful bacteria and whether defects in MUC17 contribute to IBD etiology. Ultimately, our research could result in new therapeutic approaches to treat IBD.”
The stipend will be used to analyze the barrier function of Muc17 using services offered by Bioinformatics and Data Centre (BDC), Centre for Cellular Imaging (CCI), and Experimental Biomedicine (EBM).
Read the full story here.
Pelaseyed lab has been awarded a €10,000 Research Grant from BioCodex Microbiota Foundation.
Our project entitled “Role of Breast Milk Mucins in Regulation of Infant Gut Microbiota and Health” was selected by the Swedish Scientific Board of the BioCodex Microbiota Foundation.
Pelaseyed Lab is dedicated to supporting students, PhD students and postdocs from Ukraine who seek refuge in Sweden following the Russian invasion.
If you are looking for a research lab where you can continue your research in life sciences, don’t hesistate to contact us. We will do our best to provide you with scholarships, lab space and supervision.
You can read more about our ongoing research projects here.
Contact Thaher Pelaseyed thaher.pelaseye[at]medkem.gu.se for more information.
Thaher has been eleected Research Supervisor of the Year 2021. The award is presented by Students in Research Committee at Sahlgrenska Academy. Read an interview with Thaher here.
Human tissue surfaces are coated with mucins, a family of macromolecular sugar-laden proteins serving diverse functions from lubrication to formation of selective biochemical barriers against harmful microorganisms and molecules. Membrane mucins are a distinct group of mucins that are attached to epithelial cell surfaces where they create a dense glycocalyx facing the extracellular environment.
However, the repetitive nature of mucin domains makes them prone to recombination and render their genetic sequences particularly difficult to read with standard sequencing technologies. As a result, human mucin genes suffer from significant sequence gaps that have hampered investigation of gene function in health and disease. Here we leveraged a recent human genome assembly to identify a previously unmapped MUC3B gene located within a cluster of four structurally related membrane mucin genes that we entitle the MUC3 cluster at q22 locus in chromosome 7.
Read our preprint on bioRxiv.
Elena, a postdoc in our lab, will give a talk at Janelia Workshop on Cell Biological Basis of Epithelial Physiology, 15-16 March 2021.
Elena will present our recent findings and discuss techniques we have designed for investigating the development and function of the glycocalyx that coats intestinal epithelial cells.
We are happy to share our new paper in Cell Reports, where we introduce membrane mucin MUC17 as new component of the mutilfaceted intestinal barrier. Elena has led this project, which revealed that MUC17 is associated with an innate immunity repertoire is triggered in the small intestine during the weaning transition. At this crucial event in mammalian development, MUC17 expression is induced in enterocytes, upon which MUC17 localizes to the brush border membrane to function as a barrier that prevents bacteria from binding to the host epithelium.
Congratulations, Elena, and thank you to all lab members and colleagues in the Mucin Biology Groups at University of Gothenburg!
Thaher and Professor Gunnar C. Hansson share their latest thoughts on the function, regulation and the future of membrane mucins of the intestine. Read the abstract below.
“Membrane mucins cover most mucosal surfaces throughout the human body. The intestine harbors complex population of microorganisms (the microbiota) and numerous exogenous molecules that can harm the epithelium. In the colon, where the microbial burden is high, a mucus barrier forms the first line of defense by keeping bacteria away from the epithelial cells. In the small intestine where the mucus layer is less organized, microbes are kept at bay by peristalsis and antimicrobial peptides. Additionally, a dense glycocalyx consisting of extended and heavily glycosylated membrane mucins covers the surface of enterocytes. Whereas many aspects of mucosal barriers are being discovered, the function of membrane mucins remains a largely overlooked topic, mainly because we lack the necessary reagents and experimental animal models to investigate these large glycoproteins. In this Cell Science at a Glance article and accompanying poster, we highlight central concepts of membrane mucin biology and the role of membrane mucins as integral components of intestinal mucosal barriers. We also present the current consensus concerning the role of membrane mucins in host–microbe interactions. Moreover, we discuss how regulatory circuits that govern membrane mucins in the healthy gut display strong overlap with pathways that are perturbed during chronic inflammation. Finally, we review how dysregulation of intestinal membrane mucins may contribute to human diseases, such as inflammation and cancer.”
Read more here.
Meet us at Cornell University, where Thaher will give talk with the title “Multifaceted role of membrane mucin MUC17 in intestinal barriers”.
Date: Tuesday Oct 29
Time: 4 pm
Place: 421 Weill Hall, Tower Rd, Ithaca, NY
Last year our lab received a prestigous 1-year grant from the Mucosal Immunology Studies Team, a NIH-funded consortium. We have just received news that MIST/NIH will extend our funding with an additional year. Now we will continue our work on identifying the external environmental factors that drive membrane mucin expression in the small intestine.
Congratulations to Anandi, Elena and Sofia who all received travel grants for participation in international conferences during 2019!
Anandi and Sofia will attend the 15th International Workshop on Carcinoma-associated Mucins in Cambridge, UK with poster presentations of their work.
Elena will attend the UEG Week (Oct 19-23) in Barcelona, Spain.
We welcome Anandi Rajan and Sofia Jäverfelt to our team.
Anandi has a PhD in Virology from Umeå University, Sweden. During her postdoc in the lab, she will identify microbial proteins that interact with and process intestinal transmembrane mucins.
Sofia has a MSc in Pharmacy from University of Gothenburg. Sofia dedicate her PhD training to studying the dynamic interactome of intestinal transmembrane mucins.
We are happy to announce that our research has been awarded a grant from the Mucosal Immunology Studies Team, a NIH-funded consortium. We have shown that a transmembrane mucin on the surface of intestinal cells acts as a sensor that detects the intestine’s bacteria. With the help of the grant from NIH/MIST, we will be able to identify which intestinal bacteria that are recognized by transmembrane mucins and the signaling pathways involved in sensing of gut microbiota.
Read more here.
We are glad to announce that Elena has been awarded a postdoctoral scholarship by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Elena's project focuses on revealing the connection between transmembrane mucins and the innate immune system.
Congratulations, Elena!
