Dr Rokas Grigaitis is one of the two young scientists from the VU LSC who have received the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) scholarship.
R. Grigaitis obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Biochemistry from Vilnius University and his PhD from ETH Zurich (Switzerland). He is currently researching bacteriophages.
Over the last 100 years, phage biology has transformed our understanding of microbial evolution, ecology and biochemistry providing us with various biotechnological tools and medical applications along the way. However, since phages are the most numerous and diverse entities on Earth, the majority of their biology remains unexplored.
‘I believe that there is still a lot more to be gained from such research and thus during the course of the EMBO postdoctoral fellowship I chose to study recently discovered large phages in the groups of Dr. Patrick Pausch and Dr. Stephen Jones. Here, we are mostly interested in the biochemical mechanisms that such phages utilize to disrupt and hijack the nucleic acid metabolism of the host bacteria turning them into phage factories’ tells R. Grigaitis.
He says an in-depth characterization of such mechanisms will broaden our understanding of the peculiar world of phages and bacteria as well as nucleic acid biochemistry. This knowledge might also prove useful for developing novel biotechnological and medical applications.
In addition to R. Grigaitis, another VU LSC researcher, Dr. Jorūnė Sakalauskaitė, has also received an EMBO scholarship. She is working in the field of paleoproteomics.