Katarzyna Modrzynska, PhD

Sir Henry Dale Research Fellow
Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology,
University of Glasgow

Katarzyna graduated with the MSc in biotechnology from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland and obtained her PhD at the University of Edinburgh working on the genetic mechanisms of the resistance to two important antimalarial drugs: chloroquine and artemisinin. Afterwards, fascinated the complexity of the Plasmodium life cycle she moved to the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute where, as a postdoctoral fellow, she investigated the newly discovered family of apiAP2 transcription factors and their role in the parasite’s life cycle. Her work identified a number apiAP2’s essential at different points of the parasite’s development including the key regulator of gametocytogenesis – ap2-g. In 2017 she University of Glasgow as a Sir Henry Dale Fellow and established her own group focused on the investigation of the malaria parasite’s gene expression regulation. She is interested in understanding how different transcription factors, RNA-binding proteins and chromatin marks work together to create the complex transcriptional landscape observed in the parasite.