At the frontier of life sciences
Two researchers from the Mechanobiology Institute at NUS are the only Singapore-based scientific investigators to receive the highly competitive Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Research Grants this year. The two projects, involving Associate Professor Yan Jie and Assistant Professor Timothy Saunders, will be awarded a total of $3.4 million (US$2.5 million) over three years.
The scientists’ applications were among 32 chosen after a year-long global competition that fielded more than 870 letters of intent. The Grants, grouped under the theme of “Complex mechanisms of living organisms”, place particular emphasis on cutting-edge, risky projects. The International Human Frontier Science Program Organization, which awards the grants, strongly prefers intercontinental collaborations and encourages bottom-up applications from scientists worldwide.
Assoc Prof Yan and his collaborators from Canada, the Netherlands and the UK will combine their expertise in a Program Grant project titled “Control of cell migration and polarity by a mechanosensory complex linking adhesion and microtubules”. They aim to decipher the chain of events that drive the molecular basis of how cells sense and respond to mechanical stimuli through adhesions, protein complexes on a cell’s surface that allows it to feel the physical environment. This “mechanosensing” of the physical environment is essential for cell growth, specialisation and movement.
"It is an honour to be one of the awardees of the highly competitive HFSP grant. It also means a lot to me because it proves that physics and physicists can play crucial roles in mechanobiology, a highly cross-disciplinary emerging field of life sciences," said Assoc Prof Yan.
Asst Prof Saunders is the first Singaporean-based scientist to win the Young Investigator Grant, which is only awarded to teams of researchers who have all established an independent laboratory within the past five years. By combining cell extraction with advanced bioimaging technology, Asst Prof Saunders and his collaborators from Austria, Portugal and Spain will observe and explore the process of cell polarisation in detail in their project titled “Reconstitution of cell polarity and axis determination in a cell-free system”. Incorrect cell polarity can lead to problems in cell division, migration and communication, and eventually cause diseases such as cancer, as many fundamental biological processes depend on maintaining correct polarity.
"I'm delighted to receive this prestigious grant and, in particular, to be the first HFSP Young Investigator awardee from Singapore. With my collaborators, we will work at the exciting interface between biology, chemistry and physics to better understand the fundamental cell process of polarisation," said Asst Prof Saunders.
NUS scientists who have received HFSP grants in the past were NUS Chemistry Professor Chang Young-Tae (2010), NUS Biomedical Engineering Professor Lim Chwee Teck (2012) and NUS Biochemistry Associate Professor Markus Wenk (2015).
