My name is Marco; I find it mind-blowing that from a chaotic, probabilistic soup of lifeless molecules emerges an ordered, living being aware of this fact. We take this for granted on a day-to-day basis, but it is remarkably profound. It makes us question the very essence of life itself — how big and complex does this 'soup' need to be before it crosses the boundary from dead to alive? Does there need to be a boundary in the first place? These are questions I have grappled with since the very start of my scientific pursuit, and it is this curiosity that drives my passion for biochemistry. Throughout my career, I hope to better understand the molecular interactions that make us who we are, exploring more generally how these lifeless molecules can coordinate to form miraculous and clever circuits.

I am currently an undergraduate student finalising my Bachelor of Science / Bachelor of Advanced Studies degree, majoring in biochemistry and genetics. In 2023, I was fortunate enough to join the James lab for an undergraduate research project, before later continuing as a research assistant. I am now in my honours year, where I am researching the role of MINDY1 — an uncharacterised protein recently implicated to play a role in insulin-stimulated GLUT4 translocation. I aim to solidify this link by identifying candidate substrates of MINDY1, which could ultimately improve our understanding of GLUT4 translocation — and, by extension, the development of insulin resistance, a risk factor for a range of metabolic diseases.

Contact: made0371(at)uni.sydney.edu.au