Patryk Ludzia wins a Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds PhD fellowship

Patryk's research focuses on the KKT4 protein 

Patryk Ludzia

Patryk Ludzia, a DPhil student in Bungo Akiyoshi's group, has been awarded a prestigious Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds PhD fellowship. The fellowship is awarded to outstanding junior scientists who wish to pursue an ambitious PhD project
in basic biomedical research in an internationally leading laboratory1.

Patryk studies how cells drive chromosome segregation by characterizing kinetochores, the macromolecular protein complex that mediates the interaction between centromeric DNA and spindle microtubules. Although it was widely assumed that
kinetochore components are conserved across all eukaryotes, an unconventional set of kinetochore proteins (named KKT proteins) was discovered in Trypanosoma brucei, the causative agent of human African trypanosomiasis2. Understanding
how these unconventional kinetochore proteins achieve conserved kinetochore functions will lead to a better understanding of chromosome segregation machinery in eukaryotes. Patryk's research focuses on the KKT4 protein that has both
microtubule-binding and DNA-binding activities3.

He will characterize the function of KKT4 using a variety of cutting-edge techniques.

1. https://www.bifonds.de/fellowships-grants/phd-fellowships.html
   
    
2. Akiyoshi B and Gull K. (2014) Discovery of unconventional kinetochores in kinetoplastids. Cell 156 (6): 1247–58
   
    
3. Llauró A, Hayashi H, Bailey M, Wilson A, Ludzia P, Asbury CL, and Akiyoshi B. (preprint) The unconventional kinetoplastid kinetochore protein KKT4 tracks with dynamic microtubule tips. bioRxiv doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/216812