Anna Pluciennik, PhD, Appointed Assistant Professor
The department is pleased to announce the appointment of Anna Pluciennik, PhD to Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Dr. Pluciennik has extensive expertise in all aspects of CAG triplet repeat expansion, a genetic alteration, associated with a variety of human conditions. Dr. Pluciennik earned her PhD in Biology from the University of Lodz, where she capitalized on the use of E. Coli to understand the mechanisms of CAG repeat expansion and demonstrate that strand slippage during DNA replication underlies the expansion of triplet repeats. While conduction postdoctoral research at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University. Dr. Pluciennik provided the first evidence that the genomic regions containing stretches of triplet repeats are prone to aberrant DNA recombination. Further postdoctoral work with Nobel Laureate Paul Modrich at Duke University, led to important discoveries that explained how DNA mismatch repair enzymes are able to distinguish the damaged DNA strand from the wild-type allele.
Dr. Pluciennik's research focuses on understanding the mechanisms that underlie somatic CAG repeat instability and determining how exapansions lead to disease pathology. Her recent research has been published in PNAS. The Journal of Huntington's Disease and The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Gies Foundation.
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