Magda Rudzka: The Plant Cell First Author

Magda Rudzka, co-first author of “Functional nuclear retention of pre-mRNA involving Cajal bodies during meiotic prophase in European larch (Larix decidua)”

Current position: Laboratory assistant at the Central Laboratory of the Main Inspectorate of Plant Health and Seed Inspection

Education: PhD. in Biology, and M.Sc. in Biology at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland

Non-scientific Interests: reading and crocheting

Brief bio: I became interested in mRNA localization in larch microsporocytes. In the laboratory of Dariusz Jan Smoliński, I defended my Master’s thesis entitled „In vivo location of U2, U4, U5 snRNA during the meiotic division of European larch”. Immediately after graduating, I started Ph.D. studies at the same laboratory. After five years of research, I wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled „mRNA retention in the nucleus as a post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression”. The dogma in biology was that the transcript was transported to the cytoplasm immediately after synthesis and then translated. However, it turns out that some cells have created a mechanism that causes the synthesis transcripts to retain temporarily in the cell nucleus and are transported to the cytoplasm at the appropriate stage of development or during the action of some stimulus. Using in situ and in vivo bioimaging methods and molecular methods, I demonstrated that transcripts that undergo long retention are immature in my doctoral dissertation. These transcripts have retained intron sequences. These transcripts mature at the appropriate stage and are transported to the cytoplasm and translated.