Lymphocyte Activation Lab
News

Paper out

Honored to collaborate with the amazing Ivaska lab on the powerful method of dynamic micropatterning. The work “Dynamic Micropatterning Reveals Substrate-Dependent Differences in the Geometric Control of Cell Polarization and Migration”, was published in Small Methods, last November.

You can check it here!

Congratulations to the authors involved!

10th Anniversary of Mattila lab

This year, Mattila lab reached 10 years of existence! Time flies! 10 years full of exciting science, new endeavors, and amazing people. Massive thanks to all the alumni as well as our current team for all of their efforts that made our lab what it is now, and let us believe in it now and in the future! ”Kippis” to the past and next 10 years!

We celebrated this milestone by enjoying the sauna + barbecue in our favorite, beautiful Villa Järvelä.

Welcome, welcome

This summer we welcomed two new students in the lab!

Chiara Urban came to us for an Erasmus+ internship to get a heads-up to the world of B cells and microscopy before joining Julia Jellusova’s lab at TranslaTUM, Munich, as a PhD student later this winter.

Nil Fernández Mató, currently performing his BSc studies at the University of Barcelona, came to Turku as an Erasmus+ exchange student and joined our lab to help us in validation of various target proteins obtained in our proteomic studies.

 

Our most recent work is already online

Our work on identifying new players in B cell activation by proximity proteomics is out!

We used APEX2-mediated proximity biotinylation proteomics method to map the protein dynamics at the vicinity of the BCR during the first 15 minutes of antigenic activation. From the newly identified proteins, we demonstrated a role of SUMOylation in BCR signaling, identifying SUMO as a novel posttranslational modification regulating early B cell activation.  

Check it out in here.

Book chapter out

We are pleased to announce that our latest book chapter entitled “Isolation of the B Cell Immune Synapse for Proteomic Analysis”, has been published in The Immune Synapse: Methods and Protocols.

So if you are interested in testing or adapting the protocol, the method can be download here or you can contact us directly!

Congratulations to the people involved!

Methods Mol Biol. 2023; 2654:393-408. | DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3135-5_25

New logo!

Finally, we worked out a logo for the lab!!! All the credits go to our new intern Thomy! How cool does it look?

New antibuddy in sight!

A new intern in the lab! Thomy Garnier from Lyon, France, joined us for a 5-month internship as part of his MSc studies. He is working with Blanca to set-up dSTORM super-resolution imaging.

Celebrating personal funding!

Congratulations to Blanca and Diogo for securing graduate school funding for the whole 2023 from TuDMM and InFLAMES!

Successful PhD defense

This year’s third PhD defense from our lab was celebrated on September 31st! Congratulations, Marika Runsala (née Vainio), who successfully defended her thesis “Antigen processing and intracellular trafficking in B cells”. We are very grateful for Assoc. Prof. Zhi Jane Chen from the University Oulu , Finland, for accepting our invitation to serve as an opponent of Marika’s defense and guiding an insightful discussion on the topic.  

The thesis can be found here.

All the best in the future endeavours, Marika!