Zsuzsanna Izsvák

Zsuzsanna Izsvák is a pioneer on the field of TE research in vertebrates. Her focus is to understand the basic mechanism of transposition and the interplay between TEs and host cells in mammals. Her team integrates basic knowledge with technologies that are revolutionizing genomic manipulations in vertebrate species, including gene therapy, transgenesis, cancer research and functional genomics. The other objective of her research is to investigate the impact of TE-derived activities on the vertebrate genome. To model how a vertebrate-specific transposon senses and responds to cellular signals of the host organism, she studies molecular interactions of transposons with host cellular mechanisms. Her studies highlights evolutionary processes that seem to “recycle” the inactive TEs and argue against the dogma that views them exclusively as parasites or “junk” DNA.