Over the past 25 years, Journal of Cell Science (JCS) has been awarding a prize of £1000 – ‘The JCS Prize’ – to the first author(s) of the paper that is judged by the Editors to be the best paper published in the journal that year. This year, we have decided to rename the prize as ‘The JCS–David Stephens Prize’ to honour our colleague and friend, David Stephens, who sadly passed away in autumn 2024 (doi:10.1242/jcs.263972).
David was an outstanding cell biologist who used advanced light microscopy and electron microscopy to study the secretory pathway focusing on the function of the ER and Golgi, membrane–microtubule dynamics, and the form and function of primary cilia.
I first met David in 1999–2000 when he was a postdoc at EMBL in the lab of Rainer Pepperkok. Even at this stage, I was very impressed by his scientific maturity and knowledge, as well as his desire to understand membrane trafficking. Moreover, at weekly seminars at EMBL, he was never afraid to ask insightful or pertinent, and sometimes difficult, questions concerning people's data or interpretation. This is something that he continued throughout his career, which gained him considerable respect from the cell biology and membrane trafficking committees both in the UK and around the world. This was one of the reasons why, as the Editor-in-Chief of JCS, I invited David to become an Editor for the journal in 2015. As I had hoped, David became an outstanding editor, who excelled at picking the appropriate reviewers, guiding and supporting authors through the publication process with his scientific wisdom and imaging knowhow. He also provided me with great feedback, support and ideas in the general running of JCS, including suggesting new editors, future directions and policies.
It was not only JCS that David supported – throughout his career David was a tremendous advocate and supporter for cell biology and imaging in the UK, sitting on and chairing numerous important committees and granting bodies. These included the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the British Society of Cell Biology, the Royal Microscopical Society, and the Steering Group of the Wolfson Bioimaging Facility to name but a few. This was in addition to his extensive role in undergraduate teaching, setting up a 4-year MSc Biochemistry programme at The University of Bristol and being the Research Director for the School of Biochemistry at Bristol.
David consistently published high-quality quantitative science that tackled major fundamental questions in cell biology using a variety of imaging approaches, including high-resolution nanometre tracking of fluorescent objects, electron microscopy, TIRF microscopy, deconvolution and 3D reconstruction. He also very successfully exploited gene editing and proteomic approaches to uncover the molecular basis for membrane trafficking and cytoskeletal function, not only in cell culture models but also in zebrafish. David's papers are a joy to read, not only because they address important areas of cell biology but because the data are rigorous, logical and quantified. Over the years, he provided important mechanistic insights into how large cargoes, such as collagen, are trafficked through the ER and Golgi to be secreted. More recently, he successfully dissected the role of the Golgi matrix protein giantin and dynein 2 in the form and function of cilia.
Finally, David was not someone to overstate things – he let his data speak for themselves; this is maybe why you will not find flashy over-hyped papers in Nature, Science and the alike on his CV. He did not chase the fame of big papers – for him it was more important to publish his findings in a timely manner in respected journals, such as Journal of Cell Biology, EMBO Journal and, of course, Journal of Cell Science. His approach definitely did not have a negative impact on his career – far from it, he was a scientist's scientist who was respected by all in the cell biology community.
For these reasons, we feel it fitting to name the prize after David, whom we dearly miss.
We are pleased to announce that the winner of this year's prize is Anja Konietzny, for her paper entitled ‘Efficient axonal transport of endolysosomes relies on the balanced ratio of microtubule tyrosination and detyrosination’ (Konietzny et al., 2024). You can find out more about Anja below. A list of articles that were short-listed for the prize can also be found at the end of this article.
Anja Konietzny earned her PhD in Neuroscience at the Centre for Molecular Neurobiology Hamburg (ZMNH), University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany. Working in the lab of Dr Marina Mikhaylova, she investigated mechanisms regulating dendritic cargo trafficking, focusing on neuronal organelle transport and F-actin structures. During her doctoral studies, Anja developed novel assays, including in vitro reconstitution systems and advanced live-cell imaging approaches, to characterise how cytoskeletal elements coordinate organelle positioning and movement in neurons. Her research highlighted the role of myosin motors in dendritic lysosome transport and their impact on synaptic plasticity in a co-first author paper (van Bommel et al., 2019). Additionally, she contributed to understanding how myosin V regulates synaptopodin clustering in hippocampal dendrites (Konietzny et al., 2019).
Following her PhD in 2020, Anja continued as a postdoctoral researcher in the Mikhaylova lab, where she expanded her research on the transport and regulation of synaptic proteins. Her work has contributed to understanding how the actin-associated protein caldendrin regulates synaptic spine apparatus localisation (Konietzny et al., 2021), and the role of the endoplasmic reticulum in synaptic tagging.
She also collaborated with Institut de Recherches Servier (France) and was awarded an EMBO Scientific Exchange Grant to work at the Grenoble Institute of Neuroscience. There, she studied cytoskeletal regulation of organelle transport, specifically how microtubule post-translational modifications influence axonal long-distance trafficking (Konietzny et al., 2024).
In 2023, Anja moved to Japan as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) fellow to investigate organelle and protein trafficking in an iPSC-derived human motor nerve organoid model in the lab of Prof. Yoshiho Ikeuchi. Building on her longstanding experience in neuronal protein transport, she now applies her expertise to human model systems, aiming to uncover fundamental principles of intracellular trafficking in motor neurons.
Beyond her research, Anja is engaged in science communication and outreach. She has actively participated in a number of public science initiatives for lay audiences and contributed as a lecturer in seminar series for high school students and teacher trainees at Freie Universität Berlin and the 2022 German Association for the Promotion of Mathematical and Scientific Education (MNU) conference for secondary school teachers. In Japan, she is taking part in the JSPS Science Dialogue programme, introducing high school students to neuroscience research, discussing the path to becoming a researcher, and encouraging critical discussions on neuroscience and ethics.
