This summer a master’s student in our group, Tomasz Gawda, has successfully defended his thesis! The work entitled “Molecular Basis of Neurological Disorders Associated With Mutations in the ELP2 Gene” focused on biochemical characterization of disease-causing mutations found in one of the subunits of a tRNA modifying enzyme called Elongator. The thesis was a part of a multidisciplinary research project conducted in collaboration with University of Queensland in Australia, which findings had been published last year in Nature Communications. The study provided a detailed picture of the highly complex etiology of intellectual disabilities and autism, as well as underlined the fundamental role of the Elongator complex in health and disease.
During his studies, Tomasz was awarded a BioLAB fellowship, which allowed him to join group of Professor Tony Kossiakoff at the University of Chicago. There, Tomasz was working on generating synthetic antibodies against membrane proteins of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. From Chicago, Tomasz moved to California, where he is currently pursuing PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the California Institute of Technology. He plans to combine his background in structural biology with biomolecular engineering to develop novel methods of gene delivery and genome editing.
