Guided by these words, Sebastian M. Fica approaches his work with the commitment of an avid experimentalist. As a Sir Henry Dale Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, he pursues a deep passion for biochemistry and structural biology.
Biography
Fascinated by how molecular machines bring life to the cell, Sebastian left his native Romania to study molecular biology in the United States. After earning his Bachelor of Arts from Skidmore College in 2007, he joined the laboratories of Jonathan Staley and Joseph Piccirilli at the University of Chicago. During his PhD, he demonstrated that pre-mRNA splicing is catalyzed by RNA. This expanded our understanding of gene expression mechanisms and supported the hypothesis that fundamental eukaryotic enzymes evolved from primordial RNA catalysts.
After earning his doctorate in 2013, Sebastian moved to the United Kingdom for postdoctoral training with the late Kiyoshi Nagai at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Supported by EMBO and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowships, he used cryo-electron microscopy to capture the first structures of yeast and human spliceosomes stalled during the catalytic stage of mRNA synthesis.
In 2020, he was awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship to establish his independent research group. Today, his Oxford lab explores how spliceosomes function and are regulated in health and disease. Building on previous structural and biochemical work, Sebastian's group recently discovered novel splicing factors that modulate spliceosome dynamics to regulate alternative splicing, opening new avenues for understanding pathogenic mis-splicing.
Awards
The 2020 RNA Society/ Scaringe Post-doctoral Award, from The RNA Society (2019)
The Departmental Award for Outstanding Performance in the Field of Cell and Molecular Biology, from The University of Chicago (2014)
The Best Dissertation Award, from The University of Chicago (2014)
College appointments
Since May 2020, Sebastian is a Senior Demy at Magdalen College, Oxford. His college page can be found here.
