Roman Jerala


Roman Jerala is a Slovenian biochemist and synthetic biologist, internationally best known as the leader of Slovenian teams that won the Grand prize at the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition several times.

Life

Jerala was born in Jesenice, a town in then People's Republic of Slovenia, FPR Yugoslavia. He completed his undergraduate studies and received a PhD at the University of Ljubljana. He was a postdoc at University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA, in academic year 1994/1995.
He is now employed at the National Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana, Slovenia, as the head of its Department of Synthetic Biology and Immunology and a full professor at the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical technology, University of Ljubljana. Since 2009, he is synthetic biology project director at the Centre of Excellence EN-FIST.

Research

In 2013, Nature Chemical Biology published an article about Jerala's achievement that paves a path to designing and producing completely new protein shapes using reprogrammed bacteria by synthesizing protein that folds itself into a tetrahedron — a pyramid with a triangular base measuring just 5 nanometres along each edge - which can be used as container for delivering drugs on the nanoscale. Genetically modified Escherichia coli bacteria were drafted in to synthesize the protein.
Dek Woolfson, a biochemist from Centre for Nanoscience and Quantum Information, UK, described this kind of engineering with the following words:
Jerala's team is trying to double the size of the coiled coils in the tetrahedron, and thinking about making other shapes, such as prisms and bipyramids.

Awards

In 2011, Jerala was interviewed in Evening Guest talk show, aired by Slovenian National TV and hosted by Sandi Čolnik, one of the most recognizable Slovenian TV personalities.