petra schwertman

Industry internship at the Analytical development group (Dr. M. van Ooij) Project: Development and qualification of product characterisation assays for virus based vaccines against infectious diseases such as HIV, TB and Malaria; with a specific focus on potency testing. Main techniques: Cell culture, virus titrations, viral DNA isolations and Quantitative real time PCR.

Master graduation project at the Department of Molecular Cell Biology. Project: Identifying signal transduction pathways responsive to mitochondrial stress caused by a pathogenic mutation in the mtDNA of osteosarcoma cybrid cells. (Prof.dr. A.K. Raap/Dr. G.M. Janssen) Main techniques: Cell culture, in vitro translation assays, ATP bioluminescence assay and Western blotting. This work was published in 'Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences'

Research internship at the department of Biotechnology Project: Studying the evolutionary adaptation of the Shewanella oneidensis bacteria to low temperature. (Dr. G. Muyzer) Main techniques: Rep-PCR genomic fingerprinting and microscopy.

Main project: 'Molecular mechanisms of DNA-protein crosslink repair in genome stability and maintenance'

My PhD project combined the research fields of DNA damage repair, ubiquitin-dependent signaling and MS-based proteomics. During my PhD I gained solid knowledge of DNA damage repair and more specifically of Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER). I was responsible for setting up quantitative proteomics in the lab. The gained expertise was implemented in the development of a SILAC-based proteomic approach to identify differentially ubiquitinated protein complexes involved in the UV-induced DNA damage response. The functional characterization of promising hits from this screen gained me experience with various DNA Damage Response (DDR) assays. This work eventually resulted in the identification of UVSSA, the causative gene for UVSS (UV-sensitive syndrome), and subsequently lead to new mechanistic insights into UV-induced transcription-coupled DNA repair