Hirak Das receives ‘Best Presentation Award’ at the OEPM 2024
09/28/2024Hirak presented his work on the classification of organellar sub-proteomes using machine learning and was honoured for this work.
The Open European Peroxisome Meeting (OEPM) is a biennial conference organised by the peroxisome field and a key event in European peroxisome research. This year's meeting (as the EMBO Workshop) took place in Sant Feliu de Guixol on the Costa Brava.
A particular focus of the OEPM is the promotion of young scientists, for which the work of Hirak Das from Prof Bettina Warscheid's working group was well suited: Hirak received the prize for the best scientific presentation (presented here by Prof Ralf Erdmann and Prof Michael Schrader).
Hirak's research focusses on the definition of the proteome of peroxisomes (and other organelles). Proteins are not evenly distributed in the cell, but are usually concentrated at organelles in which they fulfil their function. These classical marker proteins for certain organelles have often been known and described for a long time. In contrast, there is a growing group of proteins whose function is not restricted to one organelle, but which change their localisation either as part of signalling cascades or depending on external factors (such as growth conditions, oxidative stress and others). The definition of these multi-localised proteins forms the scientific core of Hirak's work and the success of his approach has already been demonstrated in the validation of several candidates using orthogonal methods.
