Ajasja Ljubetič
: Damjan Makuc
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).