Parnas Award for Marcin Nowotny, Małgorzata Figiel, and co-authors
The team led by Prof. Marcin Nowotny has received an award for the best Polish experimental paper in biochemistry and molecular biology published in 2022.
The Polish Biochemical Society appreciated the paper entitled "Mechanism of protein-primed template-independent DNA synthesis by Abi polymerases" published in Nucleic Acids Research. Its corresponding authors are Marcin Nowotny and Małgorzata Figiel, and co-authors are Marta Gapińska, Mariusz Czarnocki-Cieciura, Weronika Zajko, Małgorzata Sroka from the Laboratory of Protein Structure and Krzysztof Skowronek from Biophysics and Bioanalytics Facility at IIMCB.
“In this study, we explained the molecular mechanism of two unusual DNA polymerases from bacteria involved in immunity against bacteriophages. These enzymes have a distinctive ability to make DNA strands without needing additional DNA as a template or starting fragment because they attach the first nucleotide to themselves. Our findings improve our overall comprehension of DNA polymerases. Still, it is also exciting to speculate that they could aid in engineering efforts to transform these proteins into molecular biology tools with industrial potential.” – summarizes Małgorzata Figiel.
Marcin Nowotny’s group uses structural biology and biochemistry to discover the mechanisms of action of proteins involved in the processing of nucleic acids.
As a part of the Parnas Prize, which has been awarded since 1962, the corresponding author delivers a Parnas Lecture. Prof. Marcin Nowotny’s Parnas Lecture opened the 5th BIO Congress in Szczecin on September 13, 2023.
Check out the award-winning publication: Click here
Photo: M. Figiel, M. Nowotny