Dr Guillem Ylla, head of the Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Genome Biology at the JU Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology has won the FEBS Excellence Award – a prestigious prize awarded by the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS), aimed to support research group leaders starting their research careers and carrying out research projects in the field of life sciences at the molecular level.
The grant is worth 100 thousand euros, awarded for a three-year-long period. One of the conditions for applying for the grant is being employed in another country for a period of at least two years.
Dr Guillem Ylla is among ten researchers awarded by the FEBS this year. It should also be noted that this is the first time when this European prize goes to a researcher from a Polish institution.
The funds will be used to support a project run at the Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Genome Biology concerning complex regulative mechanisms linking genomes and features, and more specifically, to more thoroughly investigate the issues discussed in the article by Dr Ylla and his collaborators recently published in PNAS journal.
The authors of the paper have established that the loss of expression of one of the genes at an early stage of embryo development could play the key role in the emergence of complete metamorphosis in insects. During this fascinating complex process, an insect enters completely different morphological stages. Within the framework of the new project, Dr Ylla’s team will try to understand the molecular mechanism based on which the gene E93 can determine a certain type of insect transformation (simple or complex metamorphosis)
Dr Guillem Ylla has been associated with the JU Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology since November 2021. The Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Genome Biology headed by him was established within the framework of the strategic programme Excellence Initiative at the Jagiellonian University (ID.UJ) as part of the BioS Priority Research Area. Before coming to Kraków Dr Ylla worked at Harvard University in the United States.
Photo: J. Wypiór
