Asifa Akhtar

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]

Asifa Akhtar
Born
Asifa Akhtar

Karachi, Pakistan
Alma materUniversity College London (BSc) Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now part of The Francis Crick Institute) (PhD)
Known forStudy of Chromatin Regulation
AwardsEMBO membership
Scientific career
FieldsChromatin Regulation
InstitutionsMax Planck Institute of Immunology and Epigenetics
Doctoral advisorRichard Treisman

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
  1. "What 10,000 fruit flies have to tell us about differences between the sexes". ScienceDaily. 19 July 2012. Retrieved 2019-06-03.
  2. "Management Board". www.ie-freiburg.mpg.de. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  3. "EMBO announces new members for 2013". EMBO. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  4. "New team, new Ideas". mpg.de. 1 July 2020. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  5. "The logistics on the drosophila X chromosome". phys.org. 2 October 2015. Retrieved 2019-06-03.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. "EMBL news letter 2008" (PDF).
  12. "Prizewinners of the Feldberg Foundation". www.feldbergfoundation.org. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
  • Asifa Akhtar the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics.
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