Laboratory of Structural Virology

GROUP LEADER
GROUP LEADER

Piotr Gerlach, PhD


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Orcid 0000-0001-9599-7322Orcid 0000-0001-9599-7322
Dr. Piotr Gerlach joined ReMedy IRAP at the International Institute of Molecular Mechanisms and Machines Polish Academy of Sciences (IMol PAS) in summer 2021. During his PhD in Dr. Stephen Cusack’s group at EMBL in Grenoble, he succeeded in determining the first atomic structure of a bunya viral polymerase. Securing an EMBO Long Term Fellowship, he joined prof. Elena Conti’s lab at Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich, where he studied the human RNA exosome using cryo-EM. Recently, dr. Gerlach has received an EMBO Installation Grant to set up his research team at IMol.

THE SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH

Dr. Gerlach’s lab focuses on the intracellular interactions between the host cell and infectious RNA viruses, methodologically integrating structural biology approaches with the mammalian cell cultures platform. One of the major goals is to explore how RNA viruses manipulate and reprogram protein translation – the key site of the virus-host battlefront and a center of cellular stress response pathways. The knowledge delivered by the lab will allow designing innovative therapies and broad-spectrum antivirals.