Scientist of the Month

Daria Passow (she/her)

PhD Student Polly Fordyce Lab

I am fascinated by the promise of “protein design” – understanding the physical and chemical principles of natural proteins enough to design new proteins tailor-made to solve important problems for healthcare, scientific research, the environment, and the chemical industry. A key bottleneck for protein design is testing whether computer-designed proteins behave as expected in the real world. It is currently very expensive and time consuming to preparing protein variants one-by-one in the wet lab for high-quality measurements. The goal of my research is to make it faster, cheaper, and easier for scientists to measure many different protein variants in a single experiment. I am building a new technology that uses hydrogel beads to express and purify thousands of different protein variants within a single test tube. Each protein variant is purified onto its own bead and remains linked to its DNA sequence – enabling a variety of one-pot experiments with sequencing-based readouts. I am working to make this a user-friendly process that scientists in other labs could use to rapidly characterize large libraries of their favorite proteins!

Outside of my research, I enjoy being outside (cycling, hiking, walking), serving at my church, and hosting friends for dinner and game nights. I also love learning new things! My husband and I listen to a lot of audiobooks and enjoy discussing them together over a meal or walk.