Introduction
I am from Madagascar, having grown up in a village called Soavinandriana, Itasy.
I started my scientific journey in earnest when I moved to France in 2011 and completed a BSc and an MSc in Life Sciences at the University of Strasbourg. Inspired by my master project to continue in the field of structural biochemistry, I moved to Bordeaux in 2016 and spent time as a graduate student at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM, nouvelle-Aquitaine, France). In 2019, I obtained my PhD from the University of Bordeaux with the dissertation “Understanding the roles of the Nob1/PNo1 and RPS14/Cinap complexes in the cytoplasmic maturation of the small subunit (pre-40S) in eukaryotes”.
In 2020, I took up an exciting new position and joined the Biochemistry Department in Oxford, working as a post-doctoral researcher within the Seiradake Group.
Building on this experience, I will join the Queen’s College Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow (October 2021), presenting a fantastic opportunity to expand my research into new areas.
Research
Broadly speaking, my research to date has been in studying proteins or ‘worker molecules’ within cells. Based on their functions, there are different types of proteins including antibodies, chaperones, enzymes, hormones, and receptors.
Specifically, my research project aims to study the biological properties of cell surface receptors in the nervous and vascular systems through the use of approaches including bioinformatics, molecular biology (cloning), biochemistry (recombinant protein expression and purification) and structure determination using x-ray crystallography.
During my Fellowship, I will also undertake structural and functional studies on large receptors with the aim of applying additional techniques such as cell biology and cryo-electron microscopy.
Understanding how these receptors function on the molecular level is important in order to decipher their roles in different biological processes and any related diseases.
Publications
Raoelijaona, Finaritra, Stéphane Thore, and Sébastien Fribourg. ‘Domain Definition and Interaction Mapping for the Endonuclease Complex hNob1/hPno1’. RNA Biology 15, no. 9 (2018): 1174–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/15476286.2018.1517013.