Group photo with the Research Intensive Study Module students & organizer Juha Saarikangas.
The first HiLIFE research training module was recently completed and proved to be an immidiate success. Organized in collaboration with the Genetics and Molecular Biosciences Master’s program (GMB), this module is designed to equip master’s students for future PhD studies. Comprised of lectures (GMB-901) and hands-on research (GMB-902) the module offered a blend of knowledge and experiences for students who are interested in continuing on the academic path.
Ten exceptional students, Eli, Georgios, Nea, Neža, Nicholas, Nisa, Nuša, Vandhana, Veikka and Vid were chosen based on their academic merits and compelling motivation letters to embarked on an research journey. They were each partnered with a HiLIFE-affiliated research groups or technology centers in one of the HiLIFE’s operative units — BI, FIMM, or NC — across three campuses where the students delved into diverse research projects. The spectrum of research was broad, ranging from establishing CRISPR knockout libraries for studying colorectal cancer development, to exploring the effects of small molecules on pancreatic beta cells, and molecular simulation studies aiming to unravel the function of the respiratory chain of mitochondria.
Nicholas presenting his project.Nea carrying out her research work.
Once a week, we would gather for ‘group meetings,’ during which students presented their projects and the techniques they had learned in their respective host groups. These sessions facilitated knowledge exchange, presentation-, and problem-solving skills, overall fostering a collaborative camaraderie among the students.
The course culminated in a poster session on Fri 10.5.2024 at the Viikki Campus, where students presented their findings to an audience comprising fellow students and more senior researchers. The poster evaluation committee, comprised of GMB director Kari Keinänen and BI director Juha Huiskonen, lauded the overall quality of research conducted during the internships. The best poster price was awarded to Eli Eriksson from the Battersby lab for her presentation titled “Co-translational errors in mitochondrial protein synthesis are linked to cell fitness.” As a reward, Eli secured a prestigious HiLIFE Research Trainee Scholarship including 4-month salary to support her master’s thesis research.
Heartfelt congratulations to Eli and all participating students for their remarkable research achievements within a constrained timeframe. Also, big thanks to all the participating research groups who provided fascinating projects and excellent guidance to the students.
The call for research groups and students to partake in the 2025 course is set to open in late fall. Don’t miss out participating in this fantasticly rewarding journey!
Juha Saarikangas, Organiser
Eli Eriksson and the winning poster.Poster session at Biocenter 2, Viikki Campus.
Photo: Our world in Data map (cc) about Obesity in adults, full access: https://ourworldindata.org/obesity
Suvi Laitinen, 21, researcher and MD-PhD-student left for a research exchange right after completing her second year of medical school and returned to Finland to start her third year in mid-August. Her grant was awarded exceptionally for 2.5 months, taking into consideration the attendance requirements of her medical school. She completed an international exchange in Dr Florian Merkle’s lab at the Institute of Metabolic Science (IMS) at the University of Cambridge. Her project Obesity Curiosity is focused on understanding the relationship between hunger, satiety and obesity (Project introduction video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0dseCj4a9g )
Laitinen worked in biosafety level 2 stem cell culture, learning Dr Merkle’s lab neuron differentiation protocol and testing her differentiation protocol for organoids built on existing protocols. Dr Merkle has pioneered in differentiating human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived functional human neurons. “That work has been a game changer – thanks to his work efficient production and the study of the live human brain is possible for hypothalamic key neurons – and his team has continued the work towards applications with stunning results!”, Laitinen describes with visible enthusiasm.
She praises the supervision she received: “In addition to innovative and supportive supervision from Dr Merkle, I had the honour to learn from the brilliant postdoctoral researcher Dr Cortina Chen. Her precision, efficiency and ability to handle multiple projects at the same time is astonishing. Moreover, she welcomed me and my questions warmly to her busy schedule, took time to teach me and helped further develop the methodology for my project. I am very grateful for Dr Chen – not only was she a fabulous immediate supervisor with great leadership skills, she made me feel supported and well on track every day – and also a kind and relaxed person from whom I learnt immensely. It was wonderful to work with her!”
Results from Laitinen’s work were living organoids that then were collected as samples that are the base for her PhD project. “I am immensely grateful to Dr Merkle for warmly welcoming me into his lab and for his ongoing advice and support which has been highly impactful for my project. I have now an idea of how to continue with my research when I return to Finland. The exchange has been a wonderful experience and will stay with me for all my life!”
Laitinen reminds all aspiring young researchers to pay attention to the institute as well when thinking about where to apply: “I was so happy to have both amazing lab and institute. IMS is an amazing place – brilliant, passionate people all working in the same field in the same laboratories. The institute is indeed one of the hot spots of obesity research, and they have amazing internal and external speakers with a full auditorium almost every week. The institute also excelled beyond the academic measures, everyone was welcoming and helpful. Huge thanks to all PhD and Masters students I met, you are amazing and your great team spirit is something I am gonna miss. It was a huge privilege to be part of the community for a short period”.
During her stay, she also had the opportunity to build connections with and seek advice from the other lead scientists in the field. “I want to express my deep gratitude to Dr Madeline Lanchaster, Professor Sir Shankar Balasubramanian and Professor Sir David Klenerman for taking time from their undoubtedly very busy schedule to meet me and answer my questions”.
Dr Madeline Lanchaster pioneered by publishing first brain organoid protocol in 2014 and now leads a lab in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology on brain development in cerebral organoids. Laitinen visited her lab and had a deeply impactful discussion on different approaches in brain modelling. “Dr Lanchaster’s insight into deciding between gardening and engineering approach for brain model composition was eye-opening for me and I believe her advice will benefit the project for a long time”.
Professor Sir Shankar Balasubramanian and Professor Sir David Klenerman won the Millenium Prize in 2020 for Next Generation DNA Sequencing, awarded by the Technology Academy of Finland (TAF), which also awarded Laitinen and Maula Millenium Youth Prize 2019 for their project proposing a solution that could theoretically slow down Alzheimer’s disease.
Professor Balasubramanian leads world-class research on unconventional DNA complexes and the start-up branched from their research is currently investigating those as a treatment for human diseases. “Professor Balasubramanian had amazingly organized an exciting half a day for me to meet both his lab members in Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and at the Department of Chemistry and I met so many exciting people and changed ideas. His advice for me on how to build a research program in a smaller country like Finland and his supportive approach was incredibly helpful!”
Professor Sir David Klenerman leads a research program on imaging single molecules with complex microscopy techniques. In his lab, Laitinen saw first-hand imaging of single protein aggregates associated with neurodegenerative diseases. “I can only try to describe the awe I experienced looking at the microscope capable (with physics I am not able to explain) of visualizing individual protein complexes. Those are on a nanometer scale and it is wonderful that they have stretched the capability of technology to this level! Professor Klenerman also gave useful advice on how to bounce back after mistakes and unsuccessful events that are inevitable in science despite our best efforts especially when trying to do something completely new. Most of the time things don’t work out the way we expect them to just because they are so new”.
Laitinen describes how the research exchange in an international lab was a formative experience for her. “Traveling to Cambridge enabled me to take my project to the next level and strengthen our scientific collaboration with Dr Merkle’s lab. I learnt about exciting research done in the lab and IMS as well as other labs that welcomed me to visit. Joining one of the forefronts of my research field has been incredible and I cannot emphasise enough how impactful meeting all these brilliant people from all career stages joined in Cambridge from around the with the common goal of the best possible science has been”.
Laitinen points out how crucial the support of Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE), an independent life sciences research institute within University of Helsinki was for her experience. “HiLIFE supported me with my ambitious idea to explore something that nobody has investigated this way before. In the interview part of the multi-step application process – which by the way I think is an amazing investment of theirs to teach young scientists how to present their ideas and take that challenge of answering to a whole board of experts – I was asked if I could acquire another funding for the summer exchange. As I told them, I am fighting with all my effort for my project, still without preliminary data and restricted funding opportunities for this early career stage, I don’t think it would have been possible. HiLIFE Undergraduate Student Research trainee Scholarship is a unique opportunity and for me, it was impactful beyond measure. I think the exchange set me well for the coming years of PhD research and given me skills that I will be able to use long in my efforts to build my research program in Finland. I humbly thank you for this opportunity”.
We are a very diverse group of 10 students and here you can find about us and our project.
What is iGEM?
Welcome to the exciting world of synthetic biology! At the forefront of this rapidly developing interdisciplinary field is the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition, which originated from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA. Synthetic biology has enormous potential applications in fields such as medicine, food, agriculture, and energy. iGEM challenges students from around the world to design and implement innovative projects using experimental work, modelling applications, and cutting-edge design techniques, all within a short time frame. To learn more, please visit the official website: https://igem.org/
What is our idea?
Our team was born in February 2023, and shortly thereafter, we initiated our ideation process. Discovering a problem to address in our common interest proved more challenging than expected. Following intense ideation sessions, we came up with two proposals, which we subsequently presented to several experts. Consequently, the team reached a consensus to merge these ideas and address two pressing global challenges: plastic waste, and food scarcity.
The scale of plastic waste pollution is alarming, with over 350 million tons of plastics manufactured annually, and over 70% of plastic waste accumulating in landfills and oceans. This poses a significant environmental threat to ecosystems, marine life, and human health. Without any further changes to current policies, global plastic waste generation is projected to triple to one billion metric tons by 2060. Currently, the goal of plastic recycling is to reduce the need for primary plastic production. The competition between virgin plastics market and recycled plastics make recycling less attractive, since newly produced plastic has a higher relative material efficiency due to the ongoing availability of lower-cost feedstock.
Simultaneously, global food security remains a pressing concern, with over 820 million people undernourished and the need to increase food production by 70% before 2050. Conventional methods are insufficient to meet this growing demand. Focusing on the nordic countries, most of the agricultural activity focuses on meat production, even though it is a well known fact that it has a huge carbon footprint, and takes up double the resources than plant based food production. As the demand for food protein continues to rise, the development of novel and sustainable protein sources becomes environmentally and economically significant. There is great potential for producing protein-rich feed or food additives in the form of algae, yeasts, fungi and plain bacterial cellular biomass. They have a lower environmental footprint compared with other plant or animal-based alternatives.
We are focused on a circular economy system, aiming to reduce waste and utilise resources more efficiently by converting waste into valuable proteins. Our objective is to develop an optimised enzymatic plastic depolymerization system and demonstrate the feasibility of protein production utilising polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as the primary source.
Our project, PET-2-Protein, aims to develop a proof-of-concept approach for converting PET into proteins. Naturally occurring PETase enzymes are able to break down PET plastics into monomers such as terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG). Enzymatic degradation of plastic waste is an eco-friendly alternative to chemical plastic recycling. Our research aims to address the fundamental issue of plastic waste by focusing on plastic reduction. Consequently, we do not only design an optimised system for producing plastic-degrading enzymes but also optimise the enzymatic depolymerization of PET into TPA and EG, and finally, the microbial conversion of those monomers into proteins.
More about iGEM
iGEM is not only about designing our project. Using synthetic biology to address real-world problems requires thoughtful engagement with the world. In iGEM, this is referred to as Human Practices: thinking deeply and creatively about whether a synthetic biology project is responsible and good for the world. Throughout our project design we have contacted various experts and companies whose expertise shared similarities with PET-2-Protein, who have helped us to refine protocols and objectives. We have discussed several matters such as practicalities related to our methodology, the different uses that our end product could have and the ethical implications related to our work. Moreover, we are also focused in community outreach and science communication, addressing different audiences so that they can get to know our project, synthetic biology and iGEM. Our team is preparing a “science for children” workshop in Heureka as well as a collaboration with The Science Basement.
If you are interested in knowing more about our project and journey, you can visit our webpage, social media and blog.
Thank you for reading!
Our team wants to thank HiLIFE and the University of Helsinki for supporting the iGEM team and its project. Their support has been essential for us in order to participate in the iGEM program and competition. It has been an amazing experience and opportunity for all of us so far!
Laitinen seeks to understand hunger-satiety signalling to understand its root causes.
Check the introduction video where she describes her project.
Suvi Laitinen, 21, researcher and MD-PhD-student from the University of Helsinki started meticulously chasing her hypothesis about elevated hunger/decreased satiety in the human brain in 2022. She co-founded the Obesity Curiosity research project with Dr Teemu Aitta-Aho (PI of the Loss of Control Behaviour lab, Department of Pharmacology, University of Helsinki). She explains the big idea behind Obesity Curiosity:
“It seems that this effect [of environmental factor(s)] causes us to eat a tiny bit more every day. I hypothesise people have decreased satiety, increased hunger, or both. Some people seem to be more vulnerable to the effect while others are more resilient. This would explain why weight management is gruelling. The urge to eat is one of the most powerful signals of the body and almost impossible to resist.”
Laitinen’s PhD project is part of Obesity Curiosity and her goal in the first stage, is to develop a human arcuate nucleus model. Then in the second stage, they will use the model to study the effect of factors of interest, such as medications with weight gain as a side effect, on the human brain in vitro.
Currently, Laitinen is completing her research at a scientific collaboration visit in Dr Florian Merkle’s lab at the Institute of Metabolic Science University of Cambridge, funded by the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE) Undergraduate Student Research Trainee Scholarship. “My work here is focused on directed differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) to hypothalamic neural origin cells, including neurons. This way we can generate a model that quite faithfully replicates human physiology without having to deal with the inaccessibility of the human brain otherwise. The hiPSC cells have been generated from volunteer donations of patients in past”, she explains.
“Working in Dr Merkle’s lab allows me to learn their robust methodology of hiPSC-derived 2D hypothalamic cell culture and with his generous support I am highly grateful of, I have expanded into preliminary testing of my own protocol to generate organoids. I hope to be able to establish corresponding cultures when I return to Helsinki. The research methods learnt during the exchange will be the firm foundation of my PhD research project, and forming strong collaboration will be immensely helpful. I am highly enthusiastic about this opportunity!”
Laitinen independently designed her new research opening involving a novel methodology of assembloids based on the literature of the field in 2022 and convinced Dr Aitta-Aho to become her supervising Principal Investigator in October of the same year. She has since executed her research in the Loss of Control Behaviour lab of Dr Aitta-Aho alongside her medical school studies at the University of Helsinki. Obesity Curiosity, the wider project involving multiple approaches to study the root causes of the obesity pandemic is their joint effort.
“To understand obesity, I have started the same way as many scientists before me, by finding special cases and trying to understand the general rule from there. Common clinical knowledge and scientifically proven fact is that many psychiatric drugs statistically cause patients to gain substantial amounts of weight in a relatively short period of time. I want to study this with a novel human brain model. Long-term, I hope to be able to help in improving the treatment and prevention of obesity”
Before founding Obesity Curiosity, Laitinen had close to nine months of full-time biomedical research experience. After winning Millenium Youth Prize 2018 , she worked at Aalto University in the Department of Neuroscience and biomedical engineering rotating between different laboratories in summer 2019, exploring what the work of a researcher is like. Summer of 2020 and the four months between final exams and starting medical school in 2021, she worked at Professor Pekka Katajisto’s lab (HiLIFE Institute, University of Helsinki) in stem cell research.
In Katajisto lab, Laitinen investigated basal mammary gland cell adhesions to EMC proteins in the normal development and the cancer of mammary gland epithelium.
“The experience was amazing! Professor Pekka Katajisto and Dr Johanna Englund, my supervising researcher in the lab, always believed the most and best of me, teaching me to reach my full potential and ask all my questions. They also demonstrated how great supervising at best can be!”
Her work in 2021 also resulted in her first two co-authored publications, an accomplishment she is proud of and grateful for. “In the scientific world, they are proof that I am capable of executing research at the meticulous level, and maybe help to get respected as a fellow researcher regardless of my young age”
In her first year of medical school, she got accepted to the MD-PhD-program at the University of Helsinki, which had been her goal ever since she learnt that it is possible to become physician-doctor. “It was a nerve-wracking process, as one can apply for the program only once [in the first year of medical school] and I had focused my work towards that goal for a long time. Acceptance felt like reaching the top of a mountain – a completion – and a wonderful landscape of the research world opening in front of me!”
Her initial interest in cancer led to her choosing the first rotation lab studying ovarian cancer. She completed 2 months rotation in the Dr Anniina Färkkilä’s lab (Systems Oncology Research Program (ONCOSYS), University of Helsinki) in the summer of 2022 to learn about three cutting-edge methodologies: cyclic immunofluorescence method, patient-donated sample-derived organoids and complex cell typing flow cytometry.“The point of rotation is to get experience that helps with PhD projects, and I strongly believe these methods will help me design my own project and readouts to investigate my research questions”
“The burning question keeping me up at night is What causes the obesity pandemic? Ultimately this is about the health of over 700 million people suffering from obesity already today and countless others to come. Obesity affects everyone, if not directly themselves, their loved ones. I have a hypothesis, so I am trying my best to test it. I am working in molecular neuroscience to hopefully make the world a better place.”
Laitinen was awarded HiLIFE Undergraduate Student Research Trainee Scholarship for international research exchange in November 2022. She secured a position in Dr Merkle’s lab to conduct the research visit between May-August 2023 working on her Obesity Curiosity project.
University of Helsinki
