Michal Varga

Michal received a MSci in Pharmacology at the University of Aberdeen. During his studies he persuaded an academic placement at the Gavin Group at EMBL in Heidelberg (European Molecular Biology Laboratory), where he worked on preparation of EGFP-tagged plasmid library of human lipid transfer proteins. As an honours project he worked in the de Bari laboratory at the University of Aberdeen where he assessed a CaCO3 microparticle delivered RNA interference system as a potential therapy for osteoarthritis. The system would silence the protein responsible for the transformation of stem cells in joint lining into bone-like tissue, and thus prevent the chronic progressive cartilage degradation associated with osteoarthritis.

Michal is currently undertaking his PhD as a collaboration between The Pirbright Institute and University of Cambridge. The focus of his studies is interferon induced proteins with tetratricopeptide repeats (IFIT proteins). IFITs are well characterised in human as important negative regulators of viral replications, with the ability to recognise certain foreign RNA molecules and inhibit their translation. Michal will look at cross-species analysis of IFIT expression patterns induced by a range of viruses, followed by functional protein characterisation. This information will illustrate the molecular evolution of IFITs in livestock species and may potentially uncover novel mechanisms of these proteins.