Interview with Journal of Cell Science Editor Rob Parton Free

Prof. Rob Parton

What inspired you to become a scientist?

I don't think there was any one thing that inspired me to be a scientist; it just happened step by step. Looking back, my parents were very interested in nature, so maybe science was my destiny. My father studied chemistry as an undergraduate, and my mother liked to share things about the natural world that she thought her children would find interesting. Once, we discovered a dead mole in the freezer that she had found by the roadside and put in a freezer bag to show us later but had forgotten about. Since it was a mole – maybe that led me to chemistry as well (Dad joke!). As an undergraduate, I studied biochemistry. During that time, I read a paper in the Journal of Cell Biology featuring microscopy of a cell, and I thought it was amazingly beautiful. I honestly think that that paper was what made me so keen to go into cell biology and microscopy.

Can you tell us about your career path so far?

I grew up in East Yorkshire in the UK and then went to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland for my undergraduate studies. I did my PhD at the University of Leicester with Prof. David Critchley on the trafficking of tetanus toxin, and then that's where I started using microscopy – particularly electron microscopy (EM). I was the only person in the lab doing EM on cells, so I had to learn it by trial and error the hard way and make all the mistakes. That's why I got over any fear of doing EM at an early stage of my career!

After my PhD, I went to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany on a postdoctoral fellowship from the Royal Society and then from EMBO. I was at EMBL for 8.5 years. After 3 years, I started my own small group as a junior Group Leader. The environment there was incredibly collaborative; Prof. Gareth Griffiths was my official supervisor, and he was completely open to me collaborating with anybody, including Marino Zerial, Kai Simons, Jean Gruenberg, Elina Ikonen, Carlos Dotti and Michael Way, who is now Editor in Chief at Journal of Cell Science (JCS). I look back on that time and realise how fortunate I was to work with those great people, and I still collaborate with a lot of them today. I also got to meet people from labs around the world who came to EMBL for EM training courses, and all those contacts were fantastic for my career.

In 1996, I left for the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. When I was looking for a new position, Jan Slot, a great hero of mine who developed immunogold labelling, was on sabbatical in Brisbane working with David James using EM to study the trafficking of the glucose transporter GLUT4. He suggested that the University of Queensland could be a great place to develop my own research, because it already had established EM facilities. The University of Queensland was on an upward trajectory at that time and, and we felt we could really make a difference there. That's where I've been ever since! I am now a Group Leader and also the Deputy Director of the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis. I have very much enjoyed living in Brisbane and developing my group here and have been fortunate enough to work with wonderful people like David James, Jenny Stow, John Hancock, Alpha Yap and Brett Collins. I think I've been incredibly lucky that everywhere I've worked has had a great scientific environment and fantastic colleagues to bounce ideas off.

What was it that originally drew you to study membrane trafficking?

I was always interested in cell architecture and fascinated by using microscopy to visualise the organisation of the cell, and I like to think that there is an artistic side to microscopy as well. When I first started doing EM, I was studying how tetanus toxin gets into cells and synapses via endocytosis. I was struck by the beauty of the membranes inside cultured neurons. I suppose it's always been membrane biology that's really excited me! I think the thousands of different lipids we have in our cells and how they come together to make structures like caveolae and other organelles are fascinating.

Some of your group's earliest work uncovered the functional roles of caveolae. How has your field evolved since then?

I encountered caveolae during my PhD, but at that stage we had no known markers of caveolae at all. I was fortunate enough to be involved in the discovery of caveolin-1 in Kai Simon's lab. With that, we were able to work further on the other set of proteins that work together with the caveolin proteins, the cavins. This led us to develop the model of how this whole system worked and the idea that caveolae are metastable membrane domains. At EMBL, Michael Way helped me to clone caveolin-3, because I didn't have much experience with molecular biology at that point. Caveolin-3 turned out to be mutated in many types of muscle disease, which was an exciting finding. We still have clinical collaborations to study new mutations in caveolin-3 in cells and zebrafish models. Our understanding of the caveola has gone from a static structure we could see by EM to a dynamic structure that responds to stimuli and signals into the cell. It's been great to be part of that story, not just with my lab but with lots of people all around the world involved in this research. To see this field developing has been really exciting. Hopefully we will continue to move the field forward and discover new functions – I still don't think we know everything caveolae are doing!

What is the main theme of your lab's research and what questions are you trying to answer just now?

There are three main areas of research that we're really excited by. We're still very interested in caveolae, of course, and how they respond to stress. We believe that there are specific lipids that are required for formation of caveolae, and that these are the ‘Achilles’ heel’ of the caveolae. When these lipids are targeted, the caveolae disassemble, so we're trying to understand how that process occurs both upstream and downstream.

Next, we recently received a European Research Council (ERC) Synergy grant with overseas collaborators, particularly Albert Pol in Barcelona, to look at the role of lipid droplets in defending cells against pathogens. We came to this question from the caveolin angle while testing lots of different mutations in caveolins. A particular set of mutant proteins labelled some spherical structures in the cell, and it took us a while to work out that they were lipid droplets. We then showed that the caveolins have functional effects on lipid droplet formation. This and lots of other people's work have really contributed to a new understanding of lipid droplets and their roles in many different cell functions and organelle dynamics. We are now trying to understand how a lipid droplet can interact with, for example, a phagolysosome that contains particular bacteria.

The third part of what we're doing is in vivo cell biology. Endocytosis has actually not been studied in vivo that much yet. We use zebrafish as a model system to study trafficking of nanoparticles in particular cell types and better understand the pathways involved in a real-life, in vivo setting. We're making use of a nano-vesicle system that we developed in the lab to observe trafficking pathways and specific compartments inside cells.

What recent discoveries in your field do you find the most exciting?

I'm really excited about some landmark studies by Melanie Ohi's and Anne Kenworthy's groups that have solved the structure of caveolin oligomers. The caveolins form a beautiful disc-like structure. This finding is really changing the field, allowing us to put some of our old data into the context of the structure of this amazing protein. We're also really excited by studies that have shown the way that caveolae respond to oxidative stress, the downstream pathways involved and how lipids play a role in this whole system. I think it's fascinating how caveolins and cavins might have evolved to be sensitive to different stimuli. How are those stimuli translated into different signals inside the cell? How do these proteins work together with multiple lipids? Understanding how that system works is kind of like deciphering a ‘caveola code’.

What made you interested in taking on the role of Editor with JCS, and what impact would you like to make in this role?

I've been working as an Editor with other journals for quite a while now, since about 2000. I really enjoy the role because you get to see the latest science and new techniques that come through as well as getting to know the reviewers. I always look forward to seeing the next paper that comes in, and I try to read as many of the papers as I can. I like to think that I give a very fair and thorough review and take the role very seriously. Some papers take more work than others, but I try and keep both the authors and reviewers as happy as possible. I was happy to join JCS because it's somewhere we've published a lot of papers and we've always had an incredibly fair, thorough review process. For a journal, the Editors and the quality of the review process are crucial. For JCS, it's transparent, clear, fair and as efficient as it can be. I've also really enjoyed writing Review articles with JCS over the years and they have been very well received.

At JCS, I'll be a great advocate for membrane trafficking papers. The number of links between fundamental regulators of membrane trafficking and developmental and disease processes are remarkable; many more than I ever anticipated while initially studying these processes. I hope I can continue to support the field of membrane trafficking and promote it at JCS as I have done with other journals.

What sort of papers would you like to see more of at JCS?

One area that I would like to see more papers in is cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM). CryoEM has revolutionised structural biology, and I think it's also going to become a major tool for the regular cell biology lab. 3D cell biology papers that combine high-resolution in situ structural information with other techniques are very exciting. I also have great interest in unconventional model organisms, ‘lower’ eukaryotes that can be used to unravel specific cellular processes. Genetically manipulating these organisms is now becoming much more straightforward.

How would you like to see scientific publishing change in the future?

That topic is probably worth a full conversation is its own right! It's an interesting time for scientific publishing and things have been changing over the last few years – we put all our preprints onto bioRxiv now and we're also interested in Review Commons, so it's nice to see the recent collaboration between Review Commons and JCS. It's also exciting to see new types of publishing systems like eLife. I think all these things are going to change the way that publishing works. The changes are slow, but moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, the proliferation of predatory journals and the quality of the peer review at those journals are concerning. The most crucial factor to consider about the future of publishing is maintaining the quality of the peer review. I think that it doesn't matter what system you have in place as long as it includes really thorough peer review by scientists, handled by Editors who understand the science. I'm very grateful to all the busy scientists who give their time to review papers; it takes a lot of time and they do a great job. To continue to ensure quality peer review, it would be good to get a whole spectrum of scientists at different career stages involved. I think it's crucial for lab leaders to train their people in that process; it's certainly something I've tried to do.

You've mentioned that you have a long and productive history of collaborations. Throughout your career, what have been your approaches to establishing and maintaining good collaborations?

Over the years, a lot of people have relied on our EM expertise. I started my career with many collaborations, and having that expertise meant that I got many publications quite early on, which also then helped with the progression of my independent career. So I've always had a lot of collaborations, and I've always had to balance the work in our lab with those collaborations, but it's been incredibly valuable to learn about the techniques that our collaborators in different areas of science are using. I think it benefits the whole lab, even if not everyone in the lab is involved in every project. Constant communication is very important to maintaining collaborations; a lot of my evenings are spent emailing backwards and forwards to collaborators overseas (who are typically just waking up in Europe). As my collaborator in Barcelona, Albert Pol, will tell you, we have an interchange about our joint project just about every evening of the work week. I also still go work at the microscope myself which helps when we have collaborations that are slightly outside the expertise of anybody in the lab. Generally, my research assistant will process the samples and then I'll start on the microscope early in the morning to look at the grids. We increasingly have experiments sent over with the sample conditions encoded, so that we can do the EM and send back the results in an unbiased way. Everything is quite nicely streamlined.

What is your philosophy on leadership in science?

I try as much as possible to help lab members reach a stage where they can get their own independent funding, either to stay on in the lab or to move to another group. We actually have no permanent positions in the lab – for me or for anybody else. Securing my own fellowship funding and getting funding for lab members is a constant challenge, but we've been very fortunate and grateful to have a lot of support. I always have an open door for my people, and I'm constantly trying to nurture teamwork. I have a fantastic team who work incredibly collaboratively together. Many people in the lab have different areas of expertise, so I try to have them organise into subgroups so they can all benefit from internal collaborations. Each small group ideally has a major paper that they're working towards and their own subgroup meetings, in addition to general lab meetings, where we can take the time get further into a project and think about who else we could bring in with expertise on that subject. A number of different challenges can come along when different people with different personalities are working together, but we don't hide these things and we do our best to cope with the challenges. We talk about things like integrity in science and mental health issues in our lab meetings as well. These things wouldn't have been discussed in the lab environment 20 years ago, but it's a very refreshing change. I also always try to inspire my people with my enthusiasm. I think I still have the same enthusiasm for science that I had when I started my career, and I try to show my lab members my enthusiasm for their projects on a day-to-day basis as well.

Finally, could you tell us an interesting fact about yourself that people wouldn't know by looking at your CV?

My boring, nerdy fact is that I still love to be at the microscope myself. I still do EM and make my own figures. I even have a small light microscope at home, which I have used to search for tardigrades. Otherwise, I spend most of my time outside and in nature. I run, cycle and kayak, and do a lot of work on our property. We have a couple of horses that my daughters ride, and I'm the unpaid worker who helps look after them.

Rob Parton was interviewed by Amelia Glazier, Features & Reviews Editor for Journal of Cell Science. This piece has been edited and condensed with approval from the interviewee.