Our Matter-to-Life PhD student Silja Zedlitz received the Rainer Rudolph Award 2025 at the 77th Mosbacher Kolloquium, the traditional spring meeting of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM). The Rainer Rudolph Foundation aims to promote basic and applied research in protein biochemistry and biotechnology. The award honours young scientists who have made outstanding advances in these fields.
At the meeting, Silja presented her awarded Master’s thesis work on “Minimal rhodamine probes for covalent protein labelling in live cells”, which she conducted in the “Chemical Biology” group of Kai Johnsson at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg. In her thesis work, she synthesized and characterized small rhodamine derivatives and investigated the labelling of a small protein tag. The development of this new tag modality enables the visualization of proteins with great precision in quantitative live-cell imaging experiments.
Silja is now pursuing her PhD in the Hyman lab, where she is interested in the physicochemical properties of biomolecular condensates, particularly stress granules, and continues to use chemical biology tools to study those assemblies.
Congratulations, we are happy to have you in our group!
Photo: Prof. Johannes Buchner, Silja Zedlitz, and Prof. Johannes Hermann at the Mosbacher Kolloquium of the GBM.
As a bridge between her MSc and her PhD, Silja also contributed to this publication:
Kompa, J., Dornfeld, L. J., Porzberg, N., Jang, S., Zedlitz, S., Lilje, S. H., Catapano, C., Jocher, D., Merk, L., Hoege, C., Mao, R., Wilhelm, J., Dietz, M. S., Tarnawski, M., Hiblot, J., Hyman, A. A., Heilemann, M., & Johnsson, K. (2026). Fast, Bright, and Reversible Fluorescent Labeling of Rhodamine-Binding Proteins. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 148(1), 1419–1429. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5c18083