• Question: How did you get into studying the proteasome?

    Asked by anon-251394 to Alex on 30 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Alex Agrotis

      Alex Agrotis answered on 30 Apr 2020:


      Hi epicalpaca2 and thanks for the question!

      When I was finishing my undergraduate studies in Biochemistry I became really interested in how cells keep themselves healthy when they are stressed. One of the ways cells do this is by degrading anything that is damaged. This led me to decide to do a PhD studying autophagy – which you can read about in my answer to another question here: /medical20-zone/question/what-is-the-most-interesting-thing-you-know-about-cells/

      In a nutshell – autophagy is when cells ‘eat themselves’ to help them survive stresses such as starvation. It also helps remove damaged proteins that accumulate in cells with stress and age.

      After my PhD, I realised that I was still interested in how cells stay healthy, but I wanted to study something a little bit different to gain knowledge in a new area of research.
      The proteasome is another mechanism that cells use to stay healthy and get rid of damaged proteins. In fact, it’s probably more important than autophagy because some cell types can survive without autophagy but most can’t survive without proteasomes!

      I looked for research jobs working on proteasome and found the one I’m doing now. It’s also nice because as well as learning about a new topic, I am also using different techniques that I used in my PhD, helping me pick up new technical skills.

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