Marko Dolinar Web Page
About
myself
Travel and
nature photography
Department's wine-tasting society
About myself
As of January 2006, I am teaching assistant and assistant professor at
the
Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Ljubljana.
I am involved with different courses, including Biochemistry (3rd year
Chemistry and 2nd year Biochemistry), Recombinant DNA Technology
(4th year Biochemistry) and Biological membranes (4th year
Biochemistry). Our small but efficient Chair of Biochemistry is the main
motor behind the only undergraduate biochemistry programme in Slovenia.
The 4-years course is organised with substantial help of lecturers from
other chairs of the faculty as well as lecturers from other
faculties and research institutes. Starting in 2005, I also teach a
part of Molecular Biology course at the postgraduate level within the
Biomedicine University programme.
In addition, I am part-time research
coworker at the Department of
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,
Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia. From June 1996 to
January 1998, I was acting head of department. The work of the
department was described in an article I wrote for
the Delo newspaper in March 1997 (in Slovenian). I spend most of my
research time at the institute dealing with recombinant cysteine
proteases. We
started about a decade ago and succeeded to produce reasonable amounts
of
various cathepsins in E. coli (see Bibliography ).
My
beginings in biochemistry were in 1984/85 with my diploma work on
isolation of chicken cystatin and kininogen from egg-whites (my mentor
was
Janko Kos, now professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy). In 1986, I
started as postgraduate student at the J. Stefan Institute (JSI)
Biochemistry Department. I did my
first
steps into genetic engineering with long-nosed viper phospholipases,
but
the majority of my knowledge in this field comes from the 3.5 years I
spent at the Munich University Department of Clinical Chemistry and
Clinical Biochemistry
(lead
by Prof. Dr. Hans Fritz). From October 1987 to
March
1991 I was working on recombinant serine protease inhibitors in the
laboratory
of Dr. Ennes Auerswald and in April 1993 I obtained my PhD from the
Technical
University in Munich.
<>Back in Ljubljana, I switched to cysteine proteases. In 1995,
our
team was
composed of (left to right on the picture) Gregor Kopitar
(now researcher in a major Slovenian pharmaceutical company), myself
(started with cathepsin L, then cathepsin H, now cathepsin W), Darja
Barlic Maganja (cathepsin L and mutants; she moved to Veterinary
Faculty after
her PhD in 1997) and Robert Kuhelj (cathepsin B; now works for an
American biotech company in Switzerland). Here, I should also mention
many BSc students, to whom I
have been mentor in those years: Dagmar Dobravc (now representing
one
of the international pharmaceutical companies), Barbara Kunic (in the
patenting
department of a Slovenian pharmaceutical company), Barbara Kahne (now
with health
authorities
on the Slovenian coast), Jerica Rozman (completed her PhD at our
department in 2003 and now continues as postdoc),
Andreja Mehle (she works in a pharmacy), Benjamin Gorinsek (completed
his PhD degree in 2005), Katja Galesa
(after her PhD she joined the structural biology group at the
Institute)
and Mare
Fonovic (postdoc at the Stanford University). In the recent years, my
diploma students were Katja Kerc (works in a pharmaceutical company),
Stanislav Mandelc (now junior researcher at the Biotechnical Faculty)
and Franci Vres (still looking for a job in biochemistry, I think). All
our work was and is
done
within a research project, lead by Prof. Dr. Vito Turk, the former
head of department and director of the Institute.
In 2006 Biochemistry Chair is moving its basic courses to the old
Chemistry building at Vegova street, but is still keeping some of the
practical courses at Jamova. This laboratory will also serve for
BSc research works and eventually for research of PhD students.
Thanks to the funds of the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology
but also in part from the JSI research programs our teaching assistants
and lecturers are engaged in, we were able to purchase all the basic
equipment needed for production, purification and characterization of
recombinant proteins. We plan to start our own projects in 2006/7.
I am/was webmaster of
the departmental homepage (with over 100 accesses per day), homepage of
the Chair of Biochemistry and of some other WWW pages, including
IST (International Society on Toxinology) and SBD (Slovenian
Biochemical Society) homepages. I was member of the Board
of the Slovenian Biochemical
Society (SBD) as treasurer (1998-2001) and secretary (2002-2005) of
the Society. Its Terminology
Comission is still working on Slovenian translations of English
biochemical terms.
Often, I was member of various organising committees, like of the
traditional Brdo Symposia on Proteinase Inhibitors and Biological
Control, Portoroz conferences on cysteine proteinases and their
inhibitors and of
several SBD meetings.
My work within the Faculty is summarized on the Faculty Web page.
Travel and Nature Photography
My favourite travel destination is SE Asia, but I try not to
neglect the native Europe. Sometimes as a tourist, more often as a
traveller I try to capture memories of other worlds. On the other side
of the camera, I am fascinated by minor things so often overseen. Some
of my photographs can be seen on my Web album.
On weekends I often escape to nearby coutryside, most often towards
South and West of Slovenia. I collected a few vistas from Slovenia
in a separate folder.
See the homepage
of the informal
biochemical wine-tasting society
to get an idea of what we do (or
rather did, as the meetings get more and more rare). It all
started at the J. Stefan
Institute, but as people move, change positions and jobs, we now have
members from all around Ljubljana, from PhD students to retired
researchers and university professors.
Slovenian wines
are not as famous as French, Italian or Austrian, but there are some
superb wines produced in Slovenia, from the westernmost hills with
Mediterranean influences and prevailingly red wines to the continental
Northeast with
predominately white
wines.
Feedback (last changed Feb
16, 2007, but still far from finished...)