Hidde Ploegh, PhD

Member, Whitehead Institute Professor of Biology, MIT 617.324.1878 ploegh@wi.mit.edu

Our bodies are in a constant state of war with countless microbes mounting attacks on us. Since 1981, Hidde Ploegh has been researching the dynamics of this protracted chess game between our bodies and these outside invaders.

One of the world’s leading researchers in immune system behavior, Ploegh studies the various tactics that viruses employ to evade our immune responses, and the ways in which our immune system distinguishes friend from foe. He discusses one aspect of his work—research on flu viruses—in a video (220 kbps or 56 kbps QuickTime).

Among his achievements, in 2002 Ploegh and his laboratory reported a new mechanism by which dendritic cells sense the presence of antigens and instruct the immune response. Using fluorescent imaging, the researchers could watch the dentritic cell carry out its task in real time.

In addition, Ploegh has helped elucidate how a certain set of glycoproteins—molecules that help the immune system recognize invaders—are put together and are delivered to the right destination to help an immune response kick in. He and his fellow researchers also discovered a new mechanism by which viruses evade the immune system.

Lately, Ploegh and his coworkers have been particularly interested in generating the chemical tools with which to probe a particular family of enzymes called proteases that are a key component of the Ubiquitin-proteasome system, one of the major mechanisms by which proteins are degraded in cells.

A contributor to over 300 papers, Ploegh comes to Whitehead from the Harvard Medical School where, as Professor of Pathology, he has been heading the school’s immunology program since 1997. Prior to that, Ploegh was a Professor of Biology at MIT, working in the Center for Cancer Research.

Selected Publications

Lilley, B. N., and H. L. Ploegh. 2004. A membrane protein required for dislocation of misfolded proteins from the ER. Nature 429:834.

Borodovsky, A., H. Ovaa, N. Kolli, T. Gan-Erdene, K. D. Wilkinson, H. L. Ploegh, and B. M. Kessler. 2002. Chemistry-based functional proteomics reveals novel members of the deubiquitinating enzyme family. Chem Biol 9:1149.

Boes, M., J. Cerny, R. Massol, M. Op den Brouw, T. Kirchhausen, J. Chen, and H. L. Ploegh. 2002. T-cell engagement of dendritic cells rapidly rearranges MHC class II transport. Nature 418:983.

Wiertz, E. J., D. Tortorella, M. Bogyo, J. Yu, W. Mothes, T. R. Jones, T. A. Rapoport, and H. L. Ploegh. 1996. Sec61-mediated transfer of a membrane protein from the endoplasmic reticulum to the proteasome for destruction. Nature 384:432.

Wiertz, E. J., T. R. Jones, L. Sun, M. Bogyo, H. J. Geuze, and H. L. Ploegh. 1996. The human cytomegalovirus US11 gene product dislocates MHC class I heavy chains from the endoplasmic reticulum to the cytosol. Cell 84:769.

[publications (pubmed database)]