Goodbye to Silvia Atrian

Silvia Atrian was born in Barcelona (Catalunya, Spain) on January 6th 1957 and left us on December 5th 2016, just one month before her 60th birthday. In the words of one of our most appreciated and long-lasting collaborators and friends, Reinhard Dallinger, “we would all have needed her great heart and her skills for much more time to come”.

Silvia achieved her bachelor’s degree in Biology at the University of Barcelona (UB) in 1980 and received her PhD from the same university in 1984. Her academic and scientific life was always linked to the UB, where she was soon incorporated as a postdoctoral fellow (Department of Genetics of the Faculty of Biology). In 1984 she became assistant professor and in 1986 she was admitted to the position of Associate Professor. She held this position until 2003 when she won the University Professor's Contest at the Department of Genetics Microbiology and Statistics at the Biology Faculty of the UB.

Her doctoral thesis, under the direction of Dr Roser Gonzàlez-Duarte, was developed within the framework of what was then called Biochemical Genetics, and was centered on the study of Drosophila alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH). During her postdoctoral stage she continued with the study of this same system at the gene level, contributing to implement the techniques of molecular genetics and genetic engineering in her department. She subsequently carried out a postdoctoral stay at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland, U.K., 1988–1989) and returned to Barcelona in 1990. In collaboration with experts from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, she helped to solve the three-dimensional structure of the Drosophila ADH system, and therefore helped to establish the basis of the structure/function relationship in this enzyme.

In 1991, she started working on a new line of research, which she continued until the end of her life: “Metallothioneins, Metalloproteins and Metabolism of Metals”. This line was part of the study at a molecular level of the relationships between metals and living organisms, in which she worked in collaboration with an Inorganic Chemistry team of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), now directed by Dr Mercè Capdevila. This discipline is known as “Molecular and Cellular Biology of Metals” in the field of biology and “Bioinorganic Chemistry” in the field of chemistry. The work she carried out focused from the first moment on the basic knowledge of metallothioneins (MTs). Subsequently, her interests were extended to other topics, such as the metabolism of Zn and Cu in yeast, or proteins related to the metabolism of Fe (Ferritins and Frataxins) and/or their relationship with MTs.

Silvia Atrian devoted herself intensely to research and teaching, becoming involved in the implementation of subjects such as Molecular Genetics and Advanced Genetic Engineering. She was Secretary of the Department of Genetics at the UB in two intervals, 1987–1994 and 2000–2003, Computer Coordinator of the Department of Genetics at the UB since 1993, Member of the Research Commission of the Division III of the UB, as representative of the Department of Genetics (2000–2003), Coordinator of the Postgraduate Programme in Biotechnology and the Molecular Biotechnology Master's Degree at the UB since 2005 and Vice-Rector for Innovation and Knowledge Transfer at the UB (2010–2012).

She directed ten PhD theses and participated in a hundred publications in indexed journals, in almost two hundred communications to congresses and in three registered patents. Her work and experience gathered in almost 30 years of research led her research team to be currently recognized internationally as one of the expert groups on the subject.

Research highlights

The collaboration of our research group with that led by Silvia has always been very cordial, despite the differences in our academic formation and the ways to face scientific challenges. Together, and after difficult beginnings, we achieved a set of milestones within the field of MTs. Among these we can mention:

(1) the start-up in the 90s of the recombinant synthesis of MTs in their metallated forms (avoiding the tedious purification processes from native organisms);

(2) the discovery of the presence of additional ligands in the metal-MT clusters (sulfides and chlorides), which in some cases vary their coordinating capacities;

(3) the proposal of a new classification of these metalloproteins as a gradation between genuine Cu- and Zn-thioneins;

(4) the discovery of the role of the non-coordinating amino acids as the determinants of the metallic specificity of gastropoda MTs;

(5) the publication of the first structure of a tridominial MT.

Tributes

• “She was such an energetic woman!” (Walter Shaffner)

• “Sincere, charismatic, optimistic, energetic; she knew how to make things happen. She gave me a confidence in myself that few people have been able to transmit.” (Gisela Mir)

• “I had the immense luck of meeting Silvia and her energy and dynamism always caught my attention. As a woman in the scientific world, Silvia is for me a role model.” (Olga Iranzo)

• “We will miss her execution and her ability to ‘draw water from stones’. I will always have with me her example of pragmatism and her ability to rescue something good from everything that surrounded her.” (Ayelen Pagani)

• “We will miss her enthusiasm and her great scientific competence. The world of metallothioneins has lost a great lady, a great scientist.” (Laurence Fraisinet-Tachet)

Contributors to this collection

Obviously, the merits mentioned above would not have been possible without a handful of collaborations established over the years and that have lasted, in many cases in the field of friendship, to the present. So we cannot forget the work and friendship time shared with the following contributors to this collection (full set of collaborators in https://rsc.li/metallomics-atrian-blog):

• Reinhard Dallinger (Innsbruck, Austria) (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00215K) with whom we worked for many years, and still continue working, studying the MTs of Gastropoda, and who introduced us to Oliver Zerbe (Zurich, Switzerland) (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00193F) with whom we have managed to resolve and publish the structure of Littorina;

• Armida Torreggiani (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00164B), Anna Tinti, Carla Ferreri and Chryssostomos Chatgilialoglu (Bologna, Italy) with whom we explored the redox reactions in MTs and their Raman spectra;

• Claudia Blindauer (Warwick, UK) who has been more than a collaborator and with whom we have shared several thesis courts and we continue working together (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00161H and DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00169C);

• Stephen Sturzenbaum (London, UK) expert on the Cahenorhabditis elegants MTs and also a good friend (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00169C);

• Eva Freisinger (Zurich, Switzerland) with whom we share passion for MTs and congresses (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00193F);

• Laurence Fraisinet-Tachet (Lyon, France) with whom we explored environmental MTs (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00165K);

• Dennis Winge (Utah, USA) and all the friends made in the Copper Meetings; among them Pascale Delangle (Grenoble, France) (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00113H) and Juana Pérez and Jose Muñoz-Dorado (Granada, Spain) (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00121A) who have also contributed to this special collection;

• Claudio Fernandez (Rosario, Argentina) with whom we tried to find out how synuclein could interact with MTs (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00232K);

• Rachel Narehood Austin with whom we shared our interest for lead binding to mammalian MTs (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00294K);

• Juan Hidalgo (Barcelona, Spain) with whom we entered into the role of mammalian MTs in the brain and shared many thesis courts (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00285A);

• Magdalena Rowińska-Żyrek (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00275D) and Elzbieta Gumienna-Kontecka (Wroclaw, Poland) (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00278A) for whom we feel a great appreciation;

• Dennis Thiele (North Carolina, USA), who opened the door to the study of pathogenic fungal MTs, who introduced us to Sergi Puig (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00124C) and Lola Peñarrubia (Valencia, Spain) and hosted Anna Espart (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00174J) during her stage in Duke;

• Maria Jose Figueras (submitted) and Javier Capilla (Tarragona, Spain) with whom learned a lot about fungal MTs;

• Gabriele Meloni (Texas, USA) (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00264A) and Peter Faller (France), and his mentor Milan Vasak (Zurich, Switzerland), who have always valued our contributions to the field;

• Ricard Albalat (Barcelona, Spain) who has taken over the leadership of the research group that Silvia left, and opened the doors to the Oikopleura dioica MTs (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00177D);

• And finally, all of her PhD students who once graduated have continued to stay in contact with us. Some of those who continue devoting themselves to research have also wanted to contribute, and so we have the work of Anna Espart (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00174J), and Elena Jiménez-Martí and Mireia Tomás (DOI: 10.1039/C8MT00164B).

We hope that this collection of papers in Metallomics will be a fitting memorial to an inspiring mentor and outstanding scientist.

Mercè Capdevila and Òscar Palacios

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

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