BIO: Joris Messens is since 2012 group leader of the Redox Signaling Lab within the VIB Center for Structural Biology and professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. After several years in Biotech-industry as an Engineer in Biochemistry, he obtained his PhD from the John Moores University of Liverpool (UK, 2003) with structural and functional work on arsenate reductase from Staphyloccocus aureus. In 2006, he created together with Jean-Francois Collet (de Duve Institute, UCL) the Brussels Center for Redox Biology (http://redox.vub.ac.be/) as a platform to stimulate redox and oxidative protein folding research. Joris Messens is frequently invited speaker, session leader, chair and co-chair on international meetings, like GRC, ESF, EMBO, and he is member of the reviewing board for the DFG priority program ‘Dynamics of thiol-based switches in cellular physiology’. As a protein biochemist, he has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications (h-index = 40). Most of his studies focus on protein conformational changes induced by thiol-based reaction mechanisms, and the identification of redox-sensitive proteins.

MISSION: The mission of the Redox Signaling Lab is to decipher how cells sense and respond to redox metabolites. The importance of redox signaling for the proper functioning of the cell is being increasingly recognized, and the elucidation of its precise mechanisms and players is becoming critical, as it will allow us to manipulate these pathways with a wide variety of implications, ranging from increasing stress resistance in plants to identifying therapeutic targets in diseases where aberrant redox signaling plays a role.

MORE INFO: http://redox.vub.ac.be