Martin Toul scores big at FEBS 2021

Martin, who works in our Loschmidt Laboratories, presented his research focused on new approaches for the identification and targeted modification of the dynamic regions of proteins, which are often key elements contributing to their high efficiency. The method has since been applied to the protein luciferase, resulting in 100-fold prolonged “glow” production of light (so-called bioluminescence) compared to the original short “flash”.

“Such a result is of great importance in molecular and cell biology and clinical practice, where the luciferase is one of the most widely used diagnostic systems. In addition, luciferase engineering allowed us to reconstruct the most likely way in which the dynamics of this protein have evolved in nature over millions of years. We have accelerated this procedure in the laboratory with the new engineering method and mimicked the whole process in just a few months”, Martin said.

The research, in which researchers from the Loschmidt Laboratories of the MU Faculty of Science, collaborated with the FNUSA International Centre for Clinical Research (ICRC), Masaryk Institute of Oncology, the University of Cambridge and the University of Greifswald, recently attracted the attention of the prestigious journal ‘Nature Communications’, which included the new method of protein engineering in the editor’s selection of the top 50 articles recently published in the field.

You can read an interview with Martin Toul here.