Education

Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Division of Biochemistry, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2011

Current position

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, USA

Publications

1. Chipuk, J. E. and Luna-Vargas, M. P. (2016). Cell Biology: ERADicating Survival with BOK. Curr Biol 26(11): R473-476.
2. Gelles, J. D., Elkholi, R., Serasinghe, M. N., Luna-Vargas, M. P. and Chipuk, J. E. (2016). From zero to sixty: cell death signaling in the city that never sleeps. Oncogene 35(11): 1457-1460.
3. Luna-Vargas, M. P. and Chipuk, J. E. (2015). The deadly landscape of pro-apoptotic BCL-2 proteins in the outer mitochondrial membrane. FEBS J.
4. Clerici, M., Luna-Vargas, M. P., Faesen, A. C. and Sixma, T. K. (2014). The DUSP-Ubl domain of USP4 enhances its catalytic efficiency by promoting ubiquitin exchange. Nat Commun 5: 5399.
5. Faesen, A. C., Luna-Vargas, M. P. and Sixma, T. K. (2012). The role of UBL domains in ubiquitin-specific proteases. Biochem Soc Trans 40(3): 539-545.
6. Faesen, A. C., Luna-Vargas, M. P., Geurink, P. P., Clerici, M., Merkx, R., van Dijk, W. J., Hameed, D. S., El Oualid, F., Ovaa, H. and Sixma, T. K. (2011). The differential modulation of USP activity by internal regulatory domains, interactors and eight ubiquitin chain types. Chem Biol 18(12): 1550-1561.
7. Luna-Vargas, M. P., Christodoulou, E., Alfieri, A., van Dijk, W. J., Stadnik, M., Hibbert, R. G., Sahtoe, D. D., Clerici, M., Marco, V. D., Littler, D., Celie, P. H., Sixma, T. K. and Perrakis, A. (2011). Enabling high-throughput ligation-independent cloning and protein expression for the family of ubiquitin specific proteases. J Struct Biol 175(2): 113-119.
8. Shanmugham, A., Fish, A., Luna-Vargas, M. P., Faesen, A. C., El Oualid, F., Sixma, T. K. and Ovaa, H. (2010). Nonhydrolyzable ubiquitin-isopeptide isosteres as deubiquitinating enzyme probes. J Am Chem Soc 132(26): 8834-8835.
9. van Leuken, R. J., Luna-Vargas, M. P., Sixma, T. K., Wolthuis, R. M. and Medema, R. H. (2008). Usp39 is essential for mitotic spindle checkpoint integrity and controls mRNA-levels of aurora B. Cell Cycle 7(17): 2710-2719.
10. Alzari, P. M., Berglund, H., Berrow, N. S., Blagova, E., Busso, D., Cambillau, C., Campanacci, V., Christodoulou, E., Eiler, S., Fogg, M. J., Folkers, G., Geerlof, A., Hart, D., Haouz, A., Herman, M. D., Macieira, S., Nordlund, P., Perrakis, A., Quevillon-Cheruel, S., Tarandeau, F., van Tilbeurgh, H., Unger, T., Luna-Vargas, M. P., Velarde, M., Willmanns, M. and Owens, R. J. (2006). Implementation of semi-automated cloning and prokaryotic expression screening: the impact of SPINE. Acta Crystallogr D Biol Crystallogr 62(Pt 10): 1103-1113.
11. Nijman, S. M., Luna-Vargas, M. P., Velds, A., Brummelkamp, T. R., Dirac, A. M., Sixma, T. K. and Bernards, R. (2005). A genomic and functional inventory of deubiquitinating enzymes. Cell 123(5): 773-786.
12. Sewalt, R. G., Lachner, M., Vargas, M., Hamer, K. M., den Blaauwen, J. L., Hendrix, T., Melcher, M., Schweizer, D., Jenuwein, T. and Otte, A. P. (2002). Selective interactions between vertebrate polycomb homologs and the SUV39H1 histone lysine methyltransferase suggest that histone H3-K9 methylation contributes to chromosomal targeting of Polycomb group proteins. Mol Cell Biol 22(15): 5539-5553.