Raimundo Freire
The research of our group focuses on the molecular mechanism of the DNA damage response in human cells and its link to cancer and other processes like apoptosis or meiosis.

In the last years we were mainly interested in studying the ATR-Chk1 pathway and particularly the regulation of Claspin, a critical intermediate between ATR and Chk1. We discovered that Claspin is degraded by proteasome during the recovery from a checkpoint during the transition between G2 and mitosis. This process was dependent on beta-TrCP ubiquitination (Mamely et al, 2006). Moreover, we described a role of Claspin during apoptosis, as it is degraded by proteasome during apoptosis, and its lack contributes to the apoptotic response (Semple et al, 2007).

Our laboratory is presently interested in two main areas:
References

Mamely I, van Vugt MA, Smits VA, Semple JI, Lemmens B, Perrakis A, Medema RH, Freire R (2006). Polo-like kinase-1 controls proteasome-dependent degradation of Claspin during checkpoint recovery. Curr Biol 16: 1950-1955.

Semple JI, Smits VA, Fernaud JR, Mamely I, Freire R (2007). Cleavage and degradation of Claspin during apoptosis by caspases and the proteasome. Cell Death Differ. 14: 1433-1442.

Domínguez-Kelly R, Martín Y, Koundrioukoff S, Tanenbaum ME, Smits VAJ, Medema RH, Debatisse M, and Freire R (2011). Wee1 controls genomic stability during replication by regulating the Mus81-Eme1 endonuclease. J Cell Biol. 194: 567-579.