Molecular Genetics - Senior Research Staff - A/Prof Jörg Heierhorst

A/Prof Jörg Heierhorst

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Associate Director
NHMRC Senior Research Fellow
Head, Molecular Genetics Unit
Associate Professor, Dept of Medicine SVH, The University of Melbourne

 

Education and Professional Experience

1992     Medical School Graduate, University of Hamburg, Germany.
1993     Doctor of Medicine (summa cum laude), University of Hamburg, Germany
1995     Postdoctoral Training, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York

Achievements

1987     Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Scholarship (until 1992)
1993     HFSP Long-term Fellowship (until 1995)
1995     German Research Council (DFG) Fellowship (until 1997)
1998     NHMRC R.D. Wright Career Development Award (1998-2001)
1999     Australian Academy of Sciences International Travel Award
2002     NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship (2002-2006)
2007     NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship (2007-2011)
2012     NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship Level B (2012-2016)

Research Interests

DNA damage signalling and repair; regulation of protein kinases; crosstalk between DNA damage responses and telomere maintenance; roles of DNA damage response proteins during embryonic development.

Selected Publications

  1. Heierhorst J, Kobe B, Feil SC, Parker MW, Benian GM, Weiss KR & Kemp BE (1996). Ca2+/S100 regulation of giant protein kinases. Nature 380, 636-39.
  2. Du X-J, Cole TC, Gao X-M, Tenis N, Köntgen F, Kemp BE & Heierhorst J (2002). Impaired cardiac contractility response to hemodynamic stress in S100A1-deficient mice. Mol. Cell. Biol. 22, 2821-2829.
  3. Pike BL, Yongkiettrakul S, Tsai M-D & Heierhorst J (2003). Diverse but overlapping functions of the two forkhead-associated (FHA) domains in Rad53 checkpoint kinase activation. J. Biol. Chem. 278, 30421-30424.
  4. McNees CJ, Conlan LA, Tenis N & Heierhorst J (2005). ASCIZ regulates lesion-specific RAD51 focus formation and apoptosis after methylating DNA damage. EMBO J. 24, 2447-2457.
  5. Traven A & Heierhorst J (2005). SQ/TQ cluster domains: concentrated ATM/ATR kinase phosphorylation site regions in DNA damage response proteins. BioEssays 27, 397-407.
  6. Pike BL & Heierhorst J (2007). Mdt1 facilitates efficient repair of blocked DNA double-strand breaks and recombinational maintenance of telomeres. Mol. Cell. Biol. 27, 6532-6545.
  7. Hammet A, Magill C, Heierhorst J & Jackson SP (2007). Rad9 BRCT domains interact with phosphorylated H2AX to regulate the G1 checkpoint in budding yeast. EMBO Rep. 8, 851-857.
  8. Lee H, Yuan C, Hammet A, Mahajan A, Wu MR, Chen ESW, Su MI, Heierhorst J* & Tsai MD (2008). Diphosphothreonine-specific interaction between an SQ/TQ cluster and an FHA domain in the Rad53-Dun1 kinase cascade. Mol. Cell 30, 767-778. (*co-senior author)
  9. Jurado S, Smyth I, Van Denderen B, Tenis N, Hammet A, Hewiitt K, Ng JL, McNees CJ, Kozlov SV, Oka H, Kobayashi M, Conlan LA, Cole TC, Yamamoto K, Taniguchi Y, Takeda S, Lavin MF & Heierhorst J (2010).  Dual functions of ASCIZ in the DNA base damage response and pulmonary organogenesis.  PLoS Genetics 6, e1001170.
  10. Jurado S, Conlan LA, Baker EK, Ng JL, Tenis N, Hoch NC, Gleeson K, Smeets M, Izon D & Heierhorst J (2012).  Atm substrate chk2-interacting Zn2+-finger (ASCIZ) is a bi-functional transcriptional activator and feedback sensor of dynein light chain (DYNLL1) expression.  J. Biol. Chem.  287, in press. [http://www.jbc.org/cgi/doi/10.1074/jbc.M111.306019]