Our People—Media Spotlight on Gia Voeltz, In-Depth Interview with Nihal Altan-Bonnet, Step up for Jonathan Backer

Gia Voeltz. Photo courtesy of Gia Voeltz.

Gia Voeltz. Photo courtesy of Gia Voeltz.

In the October 3 print edition of Science News, ASCB member Gia Voeltz at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is profiled as one of ten early-career “Scientists Who Are Making Their Mark.” Under the heading, “Cell biologist gives the endoplasmic reticulum a makeover,” Science News writer Meghan Rosen explains how Voeltz’s studies shook up traditional views of the ER as a neatly folded organelle, sitting quietly near the nucleus. Instead under Voeltz’s cell imaging, the ER turns out to be a dynamic structure, extending strings of ER tubules throughout the cell and holding organelles such as mitochondria and endosomes in position during fission. Voeltz has been an ASCB member since 2011.

Nihal Altan-Bonnet. Photo courtesy of Nihal Altan-Bonnet.

Nihal Altan-Bonnet. Photo courtesy of Nihal Altan-Bonnet.

The new issue of Journal of Cell Biology (JCB) has an in depth Q&A interview by science writer Kendall Powell with ASCB member and NIH Investigator Nihal Altan-Bonnet about her discoveries of how the small GTPase Arf1 is hijacked by invading RNA viruses including those for polio, hepatitis C, and the common cold. The viruses, Altan-Bonnet says, coopt Arf1 to remodel the host cell’s secretory pathway into a viral replication assembly line. Altan-Bonnet, who first joined ASCB in 1997, runs the Laboratory of Host-Pathogen Dynamics at NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Jonathan M. Backer, ASCB member since 1998, has become Chair of Molecular Pharmacology and Biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM). Backer’s research has centered on PI-3 kinases, central to signal transduction, that sense when tyrosine kinase and G-protein coupled receptors are activated and relay those signals into the cell. Inappropriate activation of these sites is linked to the start of a number of cancer types. Backer has been at

Jonathan Backer. Credit: Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Jonathan Backer. Credit: Albert Einstein College of Medicine

AECOM since 1993.

About the Author:


John Fleischman was the ASCB Senior Science Writer from 2000 to 2016. Best unpaid perk of the job? Working with new grad students and Nobel Prize winners.