Profile

Research interests

Martin Marek is an excited scientist who wishes to understand how diverse chemical reactions are catalysed by protein catalysts (enzymes) evolved in living creatures. To this end, he combines molecular biology, biochemistry, and structural biology (X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy) to obtain atomic-level and mechanistic insights into the three-dimensional structure, function, and regulation of enzymes. He also develops protein engineering strategies and chemical tools that selectively modulate molecular functions of enzymes, applicable in basic research as well as in cutting-edge technologies. The long-term goal of his research is to address an unanswered fundamental question: how do enzymes acquire the structural diversity and conformational flexibility that allows them to evolve towards new molecular function?

Education

2007 Ph.D., Plant Pathology, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague
2007 MSc & RNDr, Virology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague
2002 MSc, Agriculture Engineering, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague

Research stays

2011 – 2017 Integrated Structural Biology Unit, IGBMC (Strasbourg, France)
2009 – 2010 Applied Vectorology Group, Genethon (Paris, France)
2007 – 2009 Laboratory of Virology, Wageningen University (Wageningen, Netherlands)

Teaching

Synthetic Biology (Bi9690en)
Molecular Biotechnology (Bi7430)
Molecular Biotechnology – Practical Course (Bi7430c)
Seminar of Loschmidt Laboratories (Bi7893)
Summer School of Protein Engineering

Scientific output

>43 research articles
2 international patents
>850 citations
H-index 17

Awards

2019 Individual High Risk/High Gain Project Award (GAMU-H) of the Masaryk University, Brno
2018 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (MSCA-IF)
2007 Award of the Dean of the Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague
2001 Award of the Dean of the Faculty of Agronomy, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague

Links

ResearchGate
ORCID
Google Scholar