PhD student Polina Reichert from Queen Mary University of London’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences (SBCS) won the best talk prize at the LIDo BBSRC DTP’s annual retreat in September.
Polina receiving her prize from UCL's Prof Geraint Thomas (Credit: Viji Draviam)
Her talk was titled ‘Understanding the spatial (re-)organisation of central carbon metabolism’ and highlighted how a spatial coalescence of metabolic enzymes can increase their productivity in organisms as diverse as humans, C. elegans and budding yeast.
Polina said, “My project aims to understand how the enzymes involved in glycolysis can be regulated on a spatial level. Presenting this topic to an audience of researchers from very different disciplines was a great opportunity to practice how to give a short and concise talk while keeping it broad enough to draw the interest of students from other scientific backgrounds.”
Polina is a joint student between the Caudron (SBCS, Queen Mary) and Oliferenko (Kings College London/Crick Institute) research groups. Dr Caudron’s research group is interested in understanding how condensation of proteins and nucleic acids into membrane-less organelles drives cell adaptation to their environment and ageing. Polina takes a comparative approach to this problem by studying the condensation properties of metabolic enzymes in three different yeast species,S. cerevisiae, S. japonicus and S. pombe.
The London Interdisciplinary Biosciences Consortium is one of the largest BBSRC funded Doctoral Training Partnerships in the UK. Representing an exciting collaboration between six of London's world-class universities (Queen Mary, Kings College, UCL, Birkbeck, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Royal Veterinary College), the consortium provides students with a unique opportunity to pursue innovative interdisciplinary research projects in the heart of one of the world's most vibrant cities.