Andrej Lupták

Andrej Lupták

Fellow: Awarded 2020
Field of Study: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Competition: US & Canada

Andrej Lupták has studied functional ribonucleic acids (RNAs) throughout his career, using a variety of approaches to discover and characterize new genomic ribozymes, aptamers, and riboswitches. He co-discovered the first human self-cleaving ribozyme, and later implemented structure-based bioinformatic searches to reveal functional RNAs in unexpected genomes and loci. These discoveries continue to lead to the observance of new mechanisms of RNA processing and regulation in a variety of organisms.

Andrej is also focused on devising novel molecular evolution techniques to identify paradigmatic catalytic RNAs relevant to the origin of life on Earth, as well as developing photoregulatory RNAs that are deployed as synthetic-biology tools to manipulate the transcriptomes of model organisms with high spatial and temporal resolution.

Photo Credit: Michelle Mar

Scroll to Top