Congratulations to Aji Jatikusumo, a PhD student in Dr Luca Pellegrini’s Group, on winning second prize in the Department of Biochemistry’s annual 3rd Year Postgraduate Symposium.
DNA replication is an essential process in all walks of life for passing down genetic information from mother to daughter cells. This process needs to be tightly regulated and efficient as any problems may result in detrimental genetic instability. Our cells have evolved a complex protein machinery to carry out the process of DNA replication. Aji’s PhD research focuses particularly on the initiation stage of the process, where molecular details are currently sketchy. Aji is approaching these outstanding questions by reconstituting the proteins responsible for initiation in vitro, which then can be used for a series of biochemical, biophysical, and structural studies.
