A few months back our Master student, Konrad has been granted with the Erasmus+ STUDY mobility scholarship and got the opportunity to spend a semester in Heidelberg, Germany working on a research project in one of the city’s top research facilities. We decided to check what interesting things is he involved in.

Konrad became an intern in Boutros Lab at DKFZ (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum), where he is involved in the project called “Decoding Context-Dependent Genetic Networks in vivo” (DECODE). The research revolves around the question of which genes or gene combinations contribute to tissue function and development and how this repertoire changes from cell to cell as well as under different environmental conditions.  “Main aim of my work is to create new sgRNA libraries targeting the Drosophila or Arabidopsis genome, that later be used for the mutation introduction and phenotype establishment. This is mostly work in silico, which is very fortunate considering the pandemic situation.” – says Konrad.

In his spare time he explores surrounding hills and forests with friends, since there are plenty of landscapes to discover around the city. “Even during the lockdown, Heidelberg is still a captivating place.“ –  he tells us.

When asked about what he wants to learn from his stay in Heidelberg, Konrad says: “I want to use the time that was given to me with my current project at DKFZ as well as possible and learn various skills used in practical research. With numerous applications of bioinformatics skills in many scientific fields, I would like to develop a solid backbone for my future experiments.”