As EMBO Young investigator, Matić receives an award of 15,000 euros, with the potential for additional funding, mentorship by a senior scientist from the community of EMBO Members, access to training in leadership skills and responsible research practices, as well as networking opportunities.
Additional benefits provided by the Programme include the use of core facilities at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, and travel grants for the Young Investigators and their research groups to attend conferences.
“I am delighted to join this network of talented young group leaders, including my colleague Dario Valenzano from the MPI for Biology of Ageing”, says Matić.
Basic research on protein modifications
The research aim of the Matić lab is to study protein ADP-ribosylation at the molecular level. With a first unbiased proteomics approach, they uncovered serine ADP-ribosylation as a new type of histone mark and described the underlying molecular mechanisms by identifying its ‘writers’ and ‘eraser’. The Matić lab also revealed an interplay of this new protein modifier with histone marks and showed that serine ADP-ribosylation is a widespread post-translational modification targeting hundreds of proteins in the DNA damage response.
The Croatian scientist received his master degree at the University of Bologna in Italy. Afterwards he performed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. Being awarded with the Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship, he went to the University of Dundee, Scotland for four years. In 2014, Matić came to Cologne and became CECAD Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing.
About EMBO
EMBO is an organization of more than 1800 leading researchers that promotes excellence in the life sciences in Europe and beyond. The major goals of the organization are to support talented researchers at all stages of their careers, stimulate the exchange of scientific information, and help build a research environment where scientists can achieve their best work.