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M. Celeste Simon is Scientific Director of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute and Arthur H. Rubenstein, MBBCh Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies tumour and stromal cell responses to variable oxygen and nutrient levels and is a devoted mentor of biomedical trainees.
Anne Simonsen is a Professor at the Department of Molecular Medicine at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences of the University of Oslo, Norway. Her work focuses on lipid-binding proteins in membrane trafficking and autophagy, and their links to disease.
Asifa Akhtar is Director at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics. Her lab focuses on chromatin and epigenetic regulation. A member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation, she received the European Life Science Organization award in 2008 and the Wilhelm Feldberg Prize in 2017.
Nancy Y. Ip is Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, the Morningside Professor of Life Science, and Director of the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China. Her career in the field of neuroscience spans over three decades.
Professor Kum Kum Khanna heads the Signal Transduction Laboratory at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia. She studies the role of the DNA damage response in tissue homeostasis and disease, including how to exploit its dysregulation in breast cancer to develop targeted therapeutic approaches.
Mayana Zatz is Professor of Genetics and Director of the Human Genome and Stem-Cell Research Center at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She works on neuromuscular disorders, ageing and, more recently, Zika virus and cancer. She has a prolific publication record and is actively involved in ethical aspects of genetic research.
Sandrine Etienne-Manneville investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying cell migration in health and disease. She is Head of the Cell Polarity, Migration and Cancer laboratory, Director of the CNRS UMR3691 unit at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France, a professor of cell biology and a mother of four.
Maho Hamasaki is an associate professor at Osaka University, Japan. Maho’s laboratory focuses on investigating the mechanistic underpinnings of autophagy and the role of the autophagic process in disease.
Fiona Watt runs the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King’s College London and is an outspoken advocate for women scientists. Since April 2018, she has been on secondment as Executive Chair of the Medical Research Council, one of the major funders of biomedical research in the UK.
Rag GTPases facilitate mTORC1 activation by recruiting it to Rheb at the lysosome when amino acids are abundant. A study now shows that the amino acid-induced change in the GTP/GDP-binding state of the Rag heterodimer paradoxically increases its dynamic release from the Ragulator at the lysosome and may limit mTORC1 activation.
Serena is a Cancer Research UK Advanced Clinician Scientist at the University of Cambridge. She studies mutation patterns in human DNA and finds ways to make it applicable in a clinical setting. Serena is a mother of two, loves music and being outdoors, and fights the forties with kung fu.
Open discourse to identify challenges and devise solutions is essential to abolish gender inequalities globally and in science. In our ‘Focus on Women in Science’, we celebrate the achievements and consider the concerns of women researchers from around the world, who share some of the turning points of their scientific careers.
In this Review, Tavernarakis and colleagues describe recent advances in delineating the molecular mechanisms that mediate mitophagy, and discuss the complex roles of this pathway in physiological and pathological contexts.
Liu et al. show that reduced m6A mRNA methylation in endometrial cancer is oncogenic. Mechanistically, the AKT pathway is activated in these tumours due to altered expression of AKT regulators carrying m6A on their transcripts.
Using a small-molecule modulator of TORC2 signalling and a mechanosensitive probe, Riggi et al. reveal that decreased plasma membrane tension induces distinct PIP2-enriched domains that sequester and inactivate TORC2.
Castaño et al. show that primary breast tumours drive an IL-1β -mediated inflammatory response that inhibits cellular plasticity and metastatic colonization of metastasis-initiating cells.
Nichols et al. identify an SHP2 inhibitor that disrupts SOS1-mediated RAS–GTP loading with demonstrated efficacy in various types of tumour driven by mutant BRAF, NF1 or RAS.