Non-canonical start codon selection mechanisms revealed by in extracto cryo-EM

Ximena Zottig earned her PhD from Université du Québec à Montréal under the supervision of Prof. Steve Bourgault, where she explored the molecular basis of peptide supramolecular assemblies for influenza vaccine development. She was supported by an NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Fellowship, and her thesis received UQAM’s Best Thesis Award. She then joined the lab of Prof. Nikolaus Grigorieff as a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, where she contributed to the development of in situ cryo-electron microscopy workflows.

In collaboration with the Korostelev Lab, she co-developed and applied in extracto cryo-EM to investigate translation initiation in a near-native cellular environment. Her work reveals non-canonical start-site selection mechanisms and regulatory proteins that control translation fidelity. Ximena is interested in combining structural biology with mRNA engineering to develop next-generation cancer vaccines