A new Master student, Tomasz Gawda, joined our group this month. Tomek will be working with Monika Gaik on the project focused on structural and functional characterization of patient-derived mutations in an essential tRNA modification enzyme – Elongator. The project is based on a collaboration with the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

Tomek says about himself: I am a Master student in biochemistry at the Jagiellonian University. During my Bachelor studies, I was working on neural differentiation of pluripotent cancer cells. Then, on an internship in Göttingen, I was investigating the interactome of proteins involved in an audition in fruit flies. My work within the Max Planck Research Group focuses on one of the Elongator complex subunits, Elp2. Some of its mutations are associated with neurological disorders and my goal is to determine their effect on the Elp2 structure and function. Besides science, I love jazz, Dostoyevsky, and playing the guitar.