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Dr. Malgorzata Wessels (née Pietrzykowska) joined Agrisera Team in January 2016 to help us to grow plant and algal antibody collection.
She grew up in Bialystok, a city in east of Poland located nearby the last primeval forest of Europe. In 2004 she moved to do her masters’ studies to Torun, Poland. There she studied Biology with specialization in General and Molecular Biology at the Nicolaus Copernicus University and took a particular interest in Plant Sciences.
In 2008, Malgorzata’s scientific interest was awarded with an UREKA (Undergraduate Research Experience and Knowledge Award) Scholarship from the Science Foundation Ireland. This allowed her to perform an independent research project during at the University College Dublin (School of Biology and Environmental Sciences) in the group of Dr. Carl Ng. She established a method for obtaining of embryogenic callus and for the propagation of suspension cell cultures from a model temperate grass species namely Brachypodium distachyon.
In 2009 Malgorzata has defended her MSc project under the supervision of Dr. Justyna Wisniewska at Plant Physiology and Biotechnology Cathedra at Nicolaus Copernicus University. Her studies helped with defining the subcellular localization of auxin and its’ efflux carriers in proliferating and differentiating calli by applying confocal laser scanning microscopy and aseptic techniques for in vitro tissue cultures.
Malgorzata lives in Sweden since 2010, where she moved to pursue her scientific interest in the group of Prof. Stefan Jansson at the Umeå Plant Science Centre, a part of Umeå University. She performed her doctoral research, as an Early Stage Researcher in the Marie-Curie Research HARVEST Network funded by the European Research Council. The investigations that granted her a doctoral degree in 2015 concentrated on establishing the specific functions of the light harvesting proteins Lhcb1 and Lhcb2, the second most abundant proteins on Earth. Thesis: The roles of Lhcb1 and Lhcb2 in regulation of photosynthetic light harvesting.
Recent publications:
The Light-Harvesting Chlorophyll a/b Binding Proteins Lhcb1 and Lhcb2 Play Complementary Roles during State Transitions in Arabidopsis. (2014). Malgorzata Pietrzykowskaa, Marjaana Suorsa, Dmitry A. Semchonok, Mikko Tikkanen, Egbert J. Boekema, Eva-Mari Aro and Stefan Jansson. The Plant Cell;
Very rapid phosphorylation kinetics suggest a unique role for Lhcb2 during state transitions in Arabidopsis. Claudia Leoni, Malgorzata Pietrzykowska, Anett Z. Kiss, Marjaana Suorsa, Luigi R. Ceci, Eva-Mari Aro, Stefan Jansson (2013). The Plant Journal;