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Bianca Maria Balzasch

DAAD RISE worldwide undergraduate intern, Pharmacology


Education:

Bianca first worked in the lab as a senior in Biochemistry at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany

Graduated in 2017 with B.Sc. in Biochemistry

Currently: master program in Cancer Biology at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany

Research Description

Under supervision of Dr. Sandra Berndt, a post-doc in the lab, Bianca is working on structure-function studies of arrestin-3.

Her intense interest lies in understanding signal transduction pathways, which integrate incoming signals and result in a complex cellular response. The scaffolding protein arrestin is especially fascinating in terms of variety of interaction partners and its crucial flexibility to bind them.

Bianca is focusing on the cScr related non-receptor tyrosine kinases (nRTKs) and their interaction with arrestin-3. Using His-tags Bianca purifies SH2 and SH3 domain of Src family nRTKs to investigate their interactions with arrestin-3 using biochemical binding assays, as well as X-ray crystallography.