Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship for Hajk Drost

These senior fellowships provide funding that enables UK universities and research institutions to attract and retain outstanding overseas senior research scientists. This funding has supported Hajk to transition his research group to the Division of Computational Biology from the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tubingen, Germany. 

“The key question of my research is: How do we get from a single cell to a complicated multi-cellular human, animal, plant, or fungus without introducing defects? Many diseases are the result of errors in development. Delving deep into the principles of cell organisation, thus, not only unveils the biological origin of diseases but also teases out avenues for innovative treatments,” explained Hajk.

“My research dives into the heart of this question by examining proteins across a broad diversity of life forms. We will leverage algorithmic innovation, software engineering, and artificial intelligence methods developed in my team, to compare all proteins across millions of species. We can quantify their evolutionary history in mere hours compared to years when employing conventional approaches. This cross-species exploration helps to pinpoint specific genes and proteins that play a central role in shaping multicellular body organisation. What's exciting is that my findings could be universal, meaning they apply not just to humans, but also to plants, fungi, and even bacteria.”

“By introducing this evolutionary perspective into medicine, my research aims to pave the way for experimentalists to trial completely new routes of investigation. This methodology may discover yet unknown proteins and possible protein interactions that emerged in some species and which could potentially be targeted in human disease prevention. Also, it could inform how other species overcome, cure, or mitigate the effects of developmental diseases, therefore providing new treatment strategies” concluded Hajk.

Read full details on the Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships and Wolfson Visiting Fellowships 2024 awardees.