Mikołaj’s defence took place on 15th December 2022. Before joining the Max Planck research group, he did his masters in Netherlands at the Utrecht University and the outcome of his work was soon published in Nature Communication.
The defence started with a short introduction of a Ph.D. student by Dr. Sebastian Glatt. He reminded that Mikołaj was his first PhD student that together with very few other team members built the lab. Mikołaj contributed to many papers published by other team members, and thanks to his natural curiosity, perseverance and tendency to dig deeply into the project, he truly contributed to other’s people research as well as paved the way for new experimental directions. Thanks to his work we gained a lot of insights of the thiolation pathway that was unknown when the project was started. Dr Glatt stressed out that Mikołaj’s thesis was of an excellent quality which only proved his fundamental understanding of the field. Dr Glatt finished by emphasising again that it was a pleasure to work with Mikołaj for these years and that he was very grateful for Mikołaj’s input in so many projects.
In the next part, Mikołaj briefly introduced the audience to the translation mechanism, tRNA modifications and thiolation cascade and then presented his Ph.D. thesis results namely Uba/Urm1 structure, biochemical analysis of thiolation of Urm1 by Uba4, a role of Tum1 protein as well as Ncs2/6 protein interactions with Urm1. Then the reviewers, Dr hab. Grażyna Leszczyńska, Dr hab. Agata Starosta and Dr hab. Michał Szymański read their reviews. All of them emphasized the high quality of the presented thesis. Then Mikołaj answered their questions, and the following discussion proved his familiarity with the field. The Committee unanimously accepted Mikołaj’s defence of the doctoral dissertation and granted him a Ph.D. degree in the field of exact and natural sciences in the discipline of Biological Sciences.
Recently, Mikołaj joined Selvita company, where he will work on high-throughput production of recombinant proteins.
It was a great pleasure to work with you, Mikołaj! Good luck!
