Nives Ivić - "Structural characterization of importinß:importin7:Histone1 complex"

Nives Ivić was born on 8th of April 1982 in Zagreb, Croatia. She studied at Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb and obtained two diploma degrees: B.Sc. Biology (2006) and B.Sc. Chemistry (2008). During studying she received a fellowship from Croatian Ministry of Science and Education. Nives did her doctoral studies at Ruđer Boškovic Institute, Laboratory for chemical and biological crystallography working on structural characterization of amino acid:[carrier protein] ligases and single-stranded DNA binding proteins (2009-2013). During her doctoral work, Nives participated in teaching undergraduate biology students through biochemistry practical. She attended international workshops, received shortterm EMBO fellowship and FEBS fellowship for attending Young Scientist Forum and 36th FEBS Congress. She did her postdoctoral research at the Gene Centre, LMU, Germany (2013-2016). There she worked on structural characterization of histone importins required for histone nuclear import. For this research she was awarded with NEWFELPRO COFUND outgoing fellowship. During her scientific career she published eight scientific papers in international peer-reviewed journals. She received the Annual Award of “The Society of University Teachers, Scholars and Other Scientists – Zagreb” for young scientists and artists in 2010, and two times the Director’s Prize for Most Successful RBI Scientists, in 2010 and 2014.

As it was stated before, Nives Ivić was a NEWFELPRO fellow from the outgoing scheme. She implemented her project called  „Structural characterization of importinß:importin7:Histone1 complex (Importins-H1 complex)“ at the Ludwig Maximilians-Universitat (Deutschland) and Ruđer Bošković Institute (Zagreb, Croatia).

The main goal of her NEWFELPRO project was to crystallize and solve the three-dimensional structure of the ternary importins:importin7:Histone1 complex using modern X-ray crystallography and cryo electron microscopy methods. During DNA replication, histones synthesised in the cytoplasm must be imported into the nucleus for the formation of nucleosomes on newly replicated DNA. While core histones are transported by monomeric importers, members of the importins superfamily, linker histone H1 is an exception and requires formation of a heterodimeric receptor consisting of importins and importin7. No structural information is available for any importin: histone complex. The structure now provides a detailed insight into the interaction network of these proteins, reveal the mechanism of their recognition and explain how Imp7 is regulated by Imps.

During her NEWFELPRO project she was involved in writting two scientific papers:
Moreover, she attended following events during her NEWFELPRO project implementation:
After completion of her NEWFELPRO project, she started to work on a project of the Laboratory of chemical and biological crystallography at the return institution in Croatia. Also, she plans to apply for her own project.