Mariia Zelenskaia

EDUCATION

College / University

Georg August University of Göttingen

Highest Degree

Bachelor of Science

Major Subjects

Biology (emphasis on molecular biosciences)

Country

Russian Federation

Lab Experience

Wildtype and transgenic (AID) mice handling, genotyping, harvesting of immune system organs, lymphocyte isolation from the large intestine. Dry lab: bash script, python, R, FlowJo, cryo-ET data processing using STA. Lipid work: SUV and GUV preparation, liposome pelleting assay. Protein techniques: SDS-PAGE, Bradford Assay, ion exchange chromatography. Techniques in cell biology: primary cell culture, cryo-preservation, counting, naïve CD4 T cell isolation, in vitro differentiation, cytokine production stimulation, extra- and intracellular staining, spectral flow cytometry. Molecular biology techniques: DNA and RNA isolation, low-input RNA-seq library preparation, ATAC-seq protocol, PCR, qPCR, agarose gel electrophoresis

Projects / Research

2023 – 2024: Student research assistant at the Max-Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany. Functional characterization of the constitutively activated b-arrestin-1. Dr. Oleksiy Kovtun lab
2023: Traineeship and undergraduate thesis at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, Austria. Role of the transcription factors RORgt and FOXP3 during the lineage commitment of Th17 and pTreg cells. Dr. Joris van der Veeken lab
2021 – 2023: Student research assistant at the Max-Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany. Development of TransAnnot: a fast transcriptome annotation pipeline. Dr. Johannes Söding lab
2020 – 2021: Term paper at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Landscape of miRNA 5’-Isoforms’ targets. Supervised by Dr. Stepan Nersisyan

Publications

Zelenskaia M, Arangasamy Y, Mirdita M, Söding J, Raghavan V (2024) TransAnnot - a fast transcriptome annotation pipeline. Bioinformatics Advances, vbae152, doi: 10.1093/bioadv/vbae152

Scholarships / Awards

2024 – 2025:	Stipend by the International Max Planck Research School
2023:	Niedersachsenstipendium
2023:	Erasmus + Scholarship for a 6-month Traineeship at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, Austria
2022 – 2023:	Deutschlandstipendium
2021:	Niedersachsenstipendium

SCIENTIFIC INTERESTS AND GOALS

My main research interests lie in the intersection of developmental biology and immunology. My goal is to combine different genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and computational approaches to investigate the changes occurring during immune system development, as well as to identify possible vulnerabilities. I intend to deepen my understanding of the above-mentioned fields during my upcoming studies. One-step further, I would like to transfer my results to autoimmune disease therapy to tackle life-threatening diseases such as multiple sclerosis and intestinal bowel disease. Moreover, I would like to gain expertise with stem cells. I am particularly mesmerized by how totipotent embryo stem cells adopt various cell fates and believe that this field has a high potential in disease modeling and therapy.