Research
Dr Lina Malinauskaitė research group, established in 2021, is part of Vilnius University Life Sciences Center – EMBL (VU LSC-EMBL) partnership institute for Gene Editing (GE) Technologies. Malinauskaitė’s lab main interest is structure-function relationship of novel GE tools using an integrated approach combining structural biology (X-ray crystallography and single particle cryo-electron microscopy) with biochemical and biophysical experimental techniques.
Prokaryotes have evolved numerous defence strategies preventing phage infection including innate immunity enabled by the restriction-modification system, and the adaptive immunity mediated by CRISPR-Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and its associated proteins) system. This field recently received a lot of attention due to an ingenious adaptation of the CRISPR-Cas system for precise gene editing and regulation and triggered an interest in search of novel defence systems aiming to adapt them for gene editing technologies. Malinauskaitė’s research group aim to contribute to the structural and mechanistic characterisation of various prokaryotic phage defence systems and a detailed mechanistic understanding of them will facilitate the development of novel tools for genetic engineering and biotechnological applications.
Malinauskaitė’s lab has regular access to state-of-the-art research facilities and instrumentation:
- VU LSC has a fully set up crystallization facility, with dispensing and mixing robots, X-ray home source for crystal screening.
- VU LSC has access to multiple European synchrotron facilities, including PETRA III and ESRF, offering remote access, and data collection.
- The institute has set up an electron microscopy facility containing a recently acquired Glacios cryo electron microscope (Thermo Fisher Scientific) operating at 200 keV and equipped with Falcon 3EC direct electron detector, which is essential for high-resolution structural studies, a Vitrobot Mark IV and GloQube Plus glow-discharger for grid preparation.
Group Members
| |
Lina Malinauskaitė, Ph.D.
Group Leader
Lina did her undergrad studies at Vilnius University and moved to Aarhus University in Denmark for her doctoral degree in 2009, working on structural studies of bacterial homologs of Neurotransmitter:sodium symporter family at Prof. Poul Nissen laboratory, where she was able to learn membrane protein crystallography techniques - in meso, HiLiDe and lipidic cubic phase. For her Postdoctoral work in 2014 she joined Dr. Radu Aricescu laboratory at Oxford University, United Kingdom, which later moved to MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and continued to concentrate on structural studies of membrane proteins – human receptors, employing X-ray crystallography and cryo electron microscopy. Lina moved back to Vilnius University in 2021 to establish her research group at VU LSC-EMBL partnership institute for Genome Editing (GE) Technologies.
|
 |
Algirdas Mikšys
Junior Researcher
Algirdas finished his bachelor’s degree in molecular biology at Vilnius University in 2013, working on CRISPR-Cas9 in the laboratory of Prof. Šikšnys. He then went on to obtain a master’s degree at Lund University, working on the major polarisome protein of Streptomyces coelicolor, DivIVA, under the supervision of Prof. Flärdh. Algirdas then moved to Regensburg University for PhD studies, in the group of Prof. Ziegler, where he used cryo-EM to determine the structure of a bacterial complex responsible for environmental stress perception – the stressosome. He will be shortly defending his degree. Algirdas joined the laboratory of Dr Malinauskaitė in February 2022. He interested in explaining how microbial life meets the challenges in its environment, be it osmotic stress or bacteriophage encounters, using the unprecedented insights that structural biology, particularly cryo-EM, can give into the molecular mechanisms governing the minutiae of microbial life.
|
 |
Rima Baltakojytė
Bachelor Student
|
Open Positions
We are recruiting Bachelor, Master’s, and Ph.D. students, interested in structural biology and the exciting field of gene editing technologies. VU LSC-EMBL partnership institute is a great collaborative environment, where we combine our strengths in different fields to advance new tools. Please contact Lina via email () if you are interested in joining our team.
