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Hans Bos

  1. Who is Hans Bos
  2. Societal impact
  3. Key publications

Who is Hans Bos

Johannes L. (Hans) Bos started his carrier in 1975 in the lab of Piet Borst in Amsterdam as a PhD student working on mitochondrial DNA of yeast. After his PhD in 1980 he moved to the lab of Alex van der Eb in Leiden, and worked on the characterization of the E1A region of the oncogenic adenovirus 12.  In 1984 he started to work on Ras mutations in human tumors. After a sabbatical year in San Francisco with Frank McCormick he moved to Utrecht in 1991 to become professor in Physiological Chemistry.

Hans Bos aims to understand the regulation and function of Ras-like small GTPases. Ras is the paradigm of the family and mutated in 15% of all human cancers. Rap is a very close relative that functions in among others cell adhesion, integrity of cell junctions, cell migration, cell polarity and secretion.

Major breakthroughs were the discovery of the cAMP-regulated Epac protein in 1998 and the discovery of the essential role of Rap1 in integrin-mediated cell adhesion in 2000 and in E-cadherin-mediated cell junction formation in 2004. More recent highlights are the elucidation of the crystal structure of Epac. Currently the main focus is on the spatio-temporal control of the Epac-Rap1 module in cell adhesion and the downstream molecular effects.

Societal impact

Recently the group has adopted the organoid culture system developed by Hans Clevers as a model system to study signal transduction in cell complexes. This includes the development of systems to perform high end live-imaging of signalling events.

Bos is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Key publications

Consonni S.V., Brouwer P.M., van Slobbe E.S, and Bos J.L. The PDZ domain of the guanine nucleotide exchange factor PDZGEF directs binding to phosphatidic acid during brush border formation. PLoS One, 2014, 9, e98253.

Consonni, S.V., Maurice, M.M. and Bos J.L. DEP domains: structurally similar, but functionally different. Nature Rev. Mol. Cell. Biol. 2014, 15, 357-363.

Post A., Pannekoek, W.-J., Ross, S.H., Verlaan, I., Brouwer, P.M. and Bos, J.L. Rasip1 mediates Rap1 regulation of Rho in endothelial barrier function through ArhGAP29. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 2013, 110, 11427-11432.

Gloerich M., Ten Klooster J.P., Vliem M.J., Koorman T., Zwartkruis F.J., Clevers H.,  Bos JL. Rap2A links intestinal cell polarity to brush border formation. Nat Cell Biol. 2012 , 14, 793-801 (PDF Article).

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