Ajasja Ljubetič


: Damjan Makuc


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The vision for my research group is to design and study mechanic protein assemblies capable of producing work and make the first steps towards designer nanorobots.

CV INFO

  • EDUCATION AND KEY QUALIFICATIONS
    • 2015-03 PhD, “ Solving Membrane Protein Structures Using Measured and Modelled Side-Chain Conformational Spaces ”, Biomedicine, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Mentor: Prof. Janez Štrancar
    • 2009 Bachelors, FKKT/Biochemistry, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • CURRENT POSITION(S)
    • 2018 – Research Assistant Professor, Department for synthetic biology and immunology, National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • PREVIOUS POSITIONS
    • 2021 – 2022 Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (integration phase, in Slovenia)
    • 2020 – 2021 Visiting Academic, Baker Lab, Institute for protein design, University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Mentor: Prof. David Baker
    • 2018 – 2020 Senior Fellow, Baker Lab, Institute for protein design, University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Mentor: Prof. David Baker
    • 2018 – 2020 Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (outgoing phase)
    • 2015 – 2018 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department for synthetic biology and immunology, National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Mentor: Prof. Roman Jerala
    • 2009 – 2015 Young researcher, F5-Condensed Matter Physics, Institute “Jozef Stefan”, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Mentor: Prof. Janez Štrancar

I have made contributions in three main research fields.

Biophysics and microscopy: During my PhD I developed a method to obtain position specific diffusion coefficients from MD simulations that was used in structure determination of membrane peptides. I have also gained a strong interest in fluorescent microscopy. Later I specialized in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and in single molecule microscopy.

Design of novel coiled coil structures: I designed a platform (CoCoPod) that enables design of arbitrary polyhedra, limited only by the number of orthogonal CCs. I have also extended the affinity and number of CC building blocks.

De novo protein design: I successfully won an MSCA fellowship that enabled me to work in the lab of David Baker at UW. I designed four helix bundles with buried hydrogen bond networks to use as feet for the random protein walker. I also contributed to COVID research and to the Rosetta modelling suite.

I also have experience with Cryo-EM and my students regularly use the in-house Cryo-EM microscope.

Publications

(see all on Google Scholar).

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