Johannes Gräff

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Johannes Gräff
Associate Professor
Portrait of Johannes Gräff in 2018
Born (1978-06-11) June 11, 1978 (age 45)
St. Gallen, Switzerland
CitizenshipSwitzerland
Alma materUniversité de Lausanne (M.Sc.) ETHZ (PhD)
Scientific career
FieldsNeuroscience, Epigenetics
InstitutionsÉcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Websitehttps://www.epfl.ch/labs/graefflab/

Johannes Gräff (born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, (1978-06-11)June 11, 1978) is a Swiss neuroscientist. He currently works as an Associate Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).[1] His research focuses on the neuroepigenetic bases of physiological and pathological memory formation.[2]

Education and career[edit]

Johannes Gräff was born and raised in St.Gallen, Switzerland, where he attended high-school at the Kantonsschule am Burggraben. He completed his undergraduate studies in biology at the University of Lausanne. During this time, he also spent one year at the University of British Columbia, where he started to become interested in neuroscience and psychology. His M.Sc. thesis, conducted with Laurent Keller in 2005, focused on the genetic causes of aging in ants. From 2005 to 2009, he completed his PhD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ) in the lab of Isabelle Mansuy working on neuroepigenetic mechanisms that regulate learning and memory. In 2009, he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to start his postdoctoral work under the supervision of Li-Huei Tsai at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, focussing on a better understanding of the epigenetic processes underlying Alzheimer's disease and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Johannes Gräff was appointed Assistant Professor on Tenure Track at the Brain Mind Institute of the School of Life Sciences at EPFL in 2013, continuing his research on the neuroepigenetic basis of learning and memory. He was promoted to Associate professor in September 2020.[3][4]

Research[edit]

As a PhD student in Isabelle Mansuy's laboratory, Johannes Gräff identified the first protein phosphatase to regulate epigenetic mechanisms during learning and memory and demonstrated that epigenetic modifications are necessary for the spatiotemporal dynamics of memory consolidation.[5][6][7]

As a postdoc in Li-Huei Tsai's laboratory, he showed that epigenetic mechanisms are causally involved in cognitive decline associated with neurodegeneration, as well as with the attenuation of long-term traumatic memories in a mouse model of post-traumatic stress disorder.[8][9]

In his laboratory at EPFL’s Brain Mind Institute, he continues to work on deciphering the cellular and molecular mechanisms of memory formation, storage and change.[2] To investigate these, his lab focuses on the emerging field of neuroepigenetics. Epigenetic mechanisms have not only been shown to react to fluctuating environmental contingencies, but also to encode cellular fate during development. Owing to this property of being at once dynamic and stable, Gräff's laboratory hypothesizes that epigenetic mechanisms have the potential to better understand the molecular processes that drive memory formation, storage and loss.[10] The laboratory also explores new ways to counteract memory impairment such as in Alzheimer’s disease, and in disorders such as PTSD.

Johannes Gräff's laboratory discovered the first methylation quantitative trait locus associated with Alzheimer's disease, and identified the brain areas as well as the cellular subpopulations important for the extinction of long-lasting traumatic memories.[11][12][13]

Awards and honours[edit]

Johannes Gräff has received several national and international research prizes and scholarships, such as the School of Science Infinite K Award of MIT in 2013, the Young Investigator Award of the Swiss Society for Biological Psychiatry, an ERC Starting Grant in 2015, the MQ fellows award in 2016, the Vallee scholarship in 2019 and the Boehringer Ingelheim FENS Research Award by the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies in 2020.[14][15][16]

He is a member of research societies such as the Swiss Society for Neuroscience (SSN), the Molecular and Cellular Cognition Society (MCCS), the Society for Neuroscience (SfN), a founding member of the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence, and has been an Executive Committee member of the European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS) from 2015 to 2018.[17]

He is also serving on the scientific advisory board for the Centre de Biologie Integrative in Toulouse, and from 2014 to 2017 for the International Food and Nutrition Center at EPFL.

Extracurricular activities[edit]

Since 2007, Johannes Gräff has been a regular contributor to the science section of the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, covering neuroscientific and psychological topics.[18][19] He has been a regular speaker at the Brain Awareness Week since 2016.[17]

References[edit]

  1. ^ ORCID. "Johannes Gräff (0000-0002-3219-3578)". orcid.org. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  2. ^ a b "UPGRAEFF". www.epfl.ch. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  3. ^ Evangelista, Sandy (2013-07-19). "Nominations of EPFL professors". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ Board, E. T. H. (2020-09-29). "Johannes Gräff promoted to Associate Professor". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. ^ Gräff, Johannes; Koshibu, Kyoko; Jouvenceau, Anne; Dutar, Patrick; Mansuy, Isabelle M. (2010-07-01). "Protein phosphatase 1-dependent transcriptional programs for long-term memory and plasticity". Learning & Memory. 17 (7): 355–363. doi:10.1101/lm.1766510. ISSN 1072-0502. PMID 20592054.
  6. ^ Koshibu, Kyoko; Gräff, Johannes; Beullens, Monique; Heitz, Fabrice D.; Berchtold, Dominik; Russig, Holger; Farinelli, Mélissa; Bollen, Mathieu; Mansuy, Isabelle M. (2009-10-14). "Protein Phosphatase 1 Regulates the Histone Code for Long-Term Memory". Journal of Neuroscience. 29 (41): 13079–13089. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3610-09.2009. ISSN 0270-6474. PMC 6665317. PMID 19828821.
  7. ^ Gräff, Johannes; Woldemichael, Bisrat T.; Berchtold, Dominik; Dewarrat, Grégoire; Mansuy, Isabelle M. (2012-08-07). "Dynamic histone marks in the hippocampus and cortex facilitate memory consolidation". Nature Communications. 3 (1): 991. Bibcode:2012NatCo...3..991G. doi:10.1038/ncomms1997. ISSN 2041-1723. PMID 22871810.
  8. ^ Gräff, Johannes; Rei, Damien; Guan, Ji-Song; Wang, Wen-Yuan; Seo, Jinsoo; Hennig, Krista M.; Nieland, Thomas J. F.; Fass, Daniel M.; Kao, Patricia F.; Kahn, Martin; Su, Susan C. (March 2012). "An epigenetic blockade of cognitive functions in the neurodegenerating brain". Nature. 483 (7388): 222–226. Bibcode:2012Natur.483..222G. doi:10.1038/nature10849. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 3498952. PMID 22388814.
  9. ^ Gräff, Johannes; Joseph, Nadine F.; Horn, Meryl E.; Samiei, Alireza; Meng, Jia; Seo, Jinsoo; Rei, Damien; Bero, Adam W.; Phan, Trongha X.; Wagner, Florence; Holson, Edward; Xu, Jinbin; Sun, Jianjun; Neve, Rachael L.; Mach, Robert H.; Haggarty, Stephen J.; Tsai, Li-Huei (2014-01-16). "Epigenetic Priming of Memory Updating during Reconsolidation to Attenuate Remote Fear Memories". Cell. 156 (1–2): 261–276. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2013.12.020. ISSN 0092-8674. PMC 3986862. PMID 24439381.
  10. ^ "Research". www.epfl.ch. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  11. ^ Sanchez-Mut, Jose V.; Heyn, Holger; Silva, Bianca A.; Dixsaut, Lucie; Garcia-Esparcia, Paula; Vidal, Enrique; Sayols, Sergi; Glauser, Liliane; Monteagudo-Sánchez, Ana; Perez-Tur, Jordi; Ferrer, Isidre (May 2018). "PM20D1 is a quantitative trait locus associated with Alzheimer's disease". Nature Medicine. 24 (5): 598–603. doi:10.1038/s41591-018-0013-y. hdl:10261/181902. ISSN 1546-170X. PMID 29736028. S2CID 13663888.
  12. ^ Khalaf, Ossama; Resch, Siegfried; Dixsaut, Lucie; Gorden, Victoire; Glauser, Liliane; Gräff, Johannes (2018-06-15). "Reactivation of recall-induced neurons contributes to remote fear memory attenuation". Science. 360 (6394): 1239–1242. Bibcode:2018Sci...360.1239K. doi:10.1126/science.aas9875. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 29903974. S2CID 49207679.
  13. ^ Silva, Bianca A.; Burns, Allison M.; Gräff, Johannes (2019-01-01). "A cFos activation map of remote fear memory attenuation". Psychopharmacology. 236 (1): 369–381. doi:10.1007/s00213-018-5000-y. ISSN 1432-2072. PMC 6373197. PMID 30116860.
  14. ^ "Identifying neuromolecular circuits of remote fear memory attenuation | MQ Mental Health Research". www.mqmentalhealth.org. 27 October 2020. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  15. ^ "Johannes Gräff, PhD | The Vallee Foundation". www.thevalleefoundation.org. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  16. ^ Office, FENS. "Johannes Gräff wins the Boehringer Ingelheim Research Award 2020". FENS.org. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  17. ^ a b "Johannes Graff". www.fens.org. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  18. ^ Gräff, Johannes. "Die DNA speichert auch Erinnerungen | NZZ". Neue Zürcher Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 2020-12-01.
  19. ^ Gräff, Johannes. "Die Unschärfe unseres Gedächtnisses | NZZ". Neue Zürcher Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 2020-12-01.
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