Now in her fifth year as a postdoctoral associate at the University, Priyanka Maiti continues to work towards finding answers surrounding cardiovascular diseases. Her work is specifically focused on how defects in the assembly process of mitoribosomes, which are ribonucleoprotein complexes that synthesize proteins inside mitochondria, impact cardiovascular diseases, such as encephalomyopathy and cardiomyopathy.
With her year as a 2019-2020 American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow coming to a close, Priyanka shares some of her recent publications as a first author:
1. Human GTPBP5 (MTG2) fuels mitoribosome large subunit maturation by facilitating 16S rRNA methylation.Maiti P, Antonicka H, Gingras AC, Shoubridge EA, Barrientos A.Nucleic Acids Res. 2020 Aug 20;48(14):7924-7943. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkaa592.
2. Human GTPBP10 is required for mitoribosome maturation.Maiti P, Kim HJ, Tu YT, Barrientos A.Nucleic Acids Res. 2018 Nov 30;46(21):11423-11437. doi: 10.1093/nar/gky938.PMID: 30321378
These achievements have not come without challenges. Like many researchers, Priyanka’s work was delayed because of the pandemic. As part of the revision process for one of her manuscripts she had sent samples to a lab in France for an experiment. “As soon as the samples reached France, the country went under lockdown and we had to wait for almost 4 months to receive the results and submit the revised manuscript” she recalls.
As her research resumes, Priyanka is looking forward to what her team hopes to contribute to the scientific knowledge on these diseases. “We expect to identify therapeutic targets to combat mito-cardiomyopathies associated with mitochondrial protein synthesis deficiencies. Hence, this work will contribute towards bringing the research community one step closer in having a society free of cardiovascular diseases,” she states.
For more information on information on Priyanka’s research, click here for her 2019 spotlight article.
