“Ribosomes can experience stress, just like people. Ribosomes are small molecular machines that produce proteins inside our cells. Stress can be triggered by exposure to radiation, certain foods, or specific drugs. This can cause ribosomes to collide with one another, or interfere with the production of proteins.
The constantly changing environment in our intestines can lead to additional stress. Healthy intestinal stem cells can easily adapt to these fluctuations; by proliferating more quickly when needed, for example. This increased activity does, however, raise the likelihood of errors, which can ultimately contribute to colorectal cancer.
My research focused primarily on translation, a biological process that is important in the function of proteins. I demonstrated that translation during cellular stress plays a key role in the development of cancer. There’s a lot left to investigate, but I firmly believe that gaining deeper insight into this process will eventually open the door to new therapies.
The complexity is what drew me to the field and motivated my move from Portugal to Amsterdam, which is where I discovered lindy hop, a jazz dance in which partners move around each other in a structured yet dynamic way, occasionally bumping into one another by accident. In that sense, we are not so different from ribosomes.”
Sofia Ramalho is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. She will defend her thesis on 20 November.
Research at the Netherlands Cancer Institute is financially supported by KWF Dutch Cancer Society and the AVL Foundation.
prof. dr. R. Agami
dr. W. Faller & dr. J. Silva