Anna Akhmanova

Anna Sergeevna Akhmanova (born 11 May 1967) is a Russian-born professor of Cell Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She is best known for her research regarding microtubules and the proteins, called TIPs, that stabilize one specific end of the tubules. Among the awards she has won, she was one of the recipients of the 2018 Spinoza Prize, the highest honor for Dutch scientists.

Biography Anna Akhmanova was born on 11 May 1967 in Moscow, Russia, to a family of scientists. Her grandmother was an English and linguistics professor, her father a physics professor, and her mother and now her brother hold PhDs in physics as well. She cites an interest in nature from an early age and that "a career in science was a very natural choice" for herself.

After graduating from Moscow State, Akhmanova left Russia to continue her studies in the Netherlands. She had originally looked for doctorate programs in Russia, but however, "the salaries were very low, there was absolutely no funding to do research, and the country as a whole was experiencing problems."

She completed two postdoctoral projects, the first of which was at RU, where she worked with anaerobic organisms for the Department of Microbiology. Her second postdoc was done at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She worked in Niels Galjart's lab in the Department of Cell Biology which Frank Grosveld headed; her research focused on gene regulation and transcription. She worked with one transcription factor using two-hybrid screening and was asked by Casper Hoogenraad for help with screening CLIP-115, a microtubule-binding protein that Hoogenraad was working with. Akhmanova and Hoogenraad then created clones for the proteins CLASP and Bicaudal-D, which Akhmanova describes as the proteins that defined her career.

Research Akhmanova and her team study the cell cytoskeleton and its effect on human diseases, cell polarization, and vertebrate development. Their main focus is on the microtubules that form part of the cytoskeleton and are essential for many processes, especially cell division. Their research is important for battling disease processes such as cancer, neurodegeneration, and the spread of pathogens throughout the cell.

In terms of methods, the team uses high resolution images of the cells they are studying. They utilize specific assays to measure protein dynamics, reconstitute cytoskeleton processes in vitro, and identify the interactions of different proteins. The grant was given for research on cell division and cell movement. and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2015), and she is the chair of the board for the Netherlands Society for Microscopy. She is also on the editorial board for various publications such as eLife, Journal of Cell Science, BMC Cell Biology, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, Traffic, and BioArchitecture.