Marta Miaczynska (Biology)
Marta Miaczynska |
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Dr. Marta Miaczynska is currently heading a Laboratory of Cell Biology at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IIMCB) in Warsaw. Research in her group is focused on the relationship between the processes of intracellular membrane transport and signal transduction in mammalian cells, two aspects of cell physiology which have been usually studied separately. Using a variety of biochemical, microscopical and cell-based techniques, her laboratory addresses the question of how intracellular signal transduction is modulated by endocytic transport and endosomal compartments. These studies should contribute to a better understanding of mechanisms underlying molecular communication between intracellular organelles.
Marta followed her interest in molecular biology as an undergraduate student at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and as an exchange student at the Wolverhampton Polytechnic, UK. After graduation with BSc and MSc degrees, she obtained a Bertha von Suttner Scholarship from the Austrian Ministry of Science to enter a PhD programme at the University of Vienna. Her thesis concerned the mechanisms underlying prenylation and membrane targeting of Rab small GTPases in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Upon completion of her PhD in genetics, Marta moved to the field of mammalian cell biology, joining the group of Dr. Marino Zerial at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. Her postdoctoral training was supported by fellowships from the Human Frontier Science Program Organization, the Federation of European Biochemical Societies and the Austrian Science Fund. Since that time, her research interests have focused on the processes of intracellular membrane trafficking and in particular on endocytosis. She was involved in projects aiming at the biochemical reconstitution of certain endocytic transport steps in vitro and assaying the function of proteins regulating endocytosis and signalling. She continued these lines of investigation also after moving to the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, with the group of Dr. Zerial. During that period, her work led to the identification of a novel signalling pathway, connecting endocytosis to nuclear signal transduction via APPL proteins which are localised to endosomes and undergo nucleocytoplasmic shuttling.
In 2005, after twelve years abroad, Marta returned to Poland where her fascination with biology once started. Her Laboratory of Cell Biology consists currently of nine people and is supported by Polish and international funding sources. At present, Marta is an International Senior Research Fellow of the Wellcome Trust and an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2007 she obtained a Habilitation Fellowship from L'Oreal Poland for Women and Science.