“I grew up in Warsaw when Poland was a communist country,” shares Joanna Trylska of the University of Warsaw. “However, because my father was a scientist we also spent some time abroad. We lived in Mérida, Venezuela, because of my father’s postdoctoral work and later in the United Kingdom because my father worked at the University of Warwick.”

Trylska’s father was a theoretical physicist in the faculty of physics at the University of Warsaw. He specialized in solid state physics, specifically in the theory of hopping conductivity in semiconductors. “Unfortunately, my dad died when I was only 12 so he did not have a chance to influence my decisions regarding the future scientific path. However, there was probably an indirect influence due to the life we led,” she says. “My mom is a mechanical engineer — now retired. She worked at the first computer facilities in Warsaw, programming in assembly language.”

In high school, Trylska excelled in math, physics, and biology. She also enjoyed these subjects more than others, so she knew that she would pursue a career that involved them somehow. “I always wanted to have a job that involves learning new things and exploring,” she explains, “however, I did not dream of being a scientist, it just happened. At one point I realized that this is just my way of living and looking at things, so a different job was not of any interest to me.”

When she entered the University of Warsaw for her undergraduate studies, the biophysics department seemed like the right fit for her to connect her interests in physics, math, and biology. She earned her master’s degree in physics with a specialization in molecular biophysics. She went on to pursue her PhD at the same university in the lab of Maciej Geller, which was in a group supervised by Bogdan Lesyng. “This was an excellent Warsaw theoretical biophysics group that provided me with great education and formed the grounds for my future computational work,” she shares.

 

"I realized that this is just my way of living and looking at things, so a different job was not of any interest to me.”

— Trylska

After completing her graduate studies, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of J. Andrew McCammon at the University of California, San Diego. She learned how to study the dynamics of large macromolecular assemblies using computer simulation. “I learned various multi-scale molecular modeling techniques and developed reduced models for molecular dynamics simulations of proteins and nucleic acids,” she says. “With these models I investigated microsecond-long functional dynamics of the ribosome. I also explored how ribosome large-scale motions modulate its electrostatic features and how electrostatics influences ribosome self-assembly. Further, I determined the dynamics of the HIV-1 protease functional flaps that enable access of drugs into the binding site and simulated association of peptide substrates and inhibitors with this enzyme.”

Trylska and her husband on a skiing trip.

Following her postdoc, Trylska returned to Poland and started a group at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modeling of the University of Warsaw, whose resources she had used as a graduate student. “First, I worked as an adjunct, and after obtaining the habilitation degree in 2009, as an associate professor,” she says. “Then in 2012, a new institute — the Centre of New Technologies — was established at the University of Warsaw, where I moved and have been working ever since.”

Her group works on the mechanisms of actions of the compounds targeting bacterial RNA in order to propose their derivatives or new compounds. “These compounds are aminoglycosidic antibiotics and synthetic oligonucleotides, mainly peptide nucleic acids,” she explains. “We design peptide nucleic acid sequences that target either bacterial ribosomal RNA or mRNA by observing the Watson-Crick pairing scheme. The ultimate goal is to search for antibiotic analogs inhibiting the function of bacterial RNA.”

One of her former students, Julia Romanowska, shares that while in Trylska’s lab, she learned more than only valuable scientific skills. “[She taught me] how to do science! And that one needs to be bold to succeed in the modern scientific world,” she says. “She is dedicated to her work, and at the same time knows how to enjoy her free time. She sets her goals high and requires a lot both from herself and co-workers, but I never had a feeling of pressure, I never overworked. Such a balance is normally very difficult to obtain.”

Her impact has not been limited to her students. Cameron Mura, a frequent collaborator whom she met when both were postdocs in McCammon’s lab, also says that Trylska has helped in his development of both technical and non-technical skills. “She taught me how to do careful pKa calculations back at UCSD. To me, that spoke to her collegiality and selflessness in helping others,” he shares. “The less technical, but also important thing: She advised me to write proposals in a way that enables the reviewer to see, within the proposal itself, the words that could be used to champion the proposal, were they so inclined. That seems obvious now, but it wasn’t to me at the time.”

McCammon himself says, “She continues to impress me with her remarkable and rather courageous commitment to science. She jumped from quantum chemical studies of enzymes to coarse-grained simulations of biomolecular complexes in our group, and she has opened an experimental biophysics program in her own group in Warsaw. She’s much bolder than I am!”

 

"[She taught me] how to do science! And that one needs to be bold to succeed in the modern scientific world.”

- Julia Romanowska

Trylska and her family at the Kyoto Zoo.

When she’s not working, Trylska enjoys reading and spending time with her eight year old daughter and their Labrador retriever. “We live close to a park, so in the summer we often bike,” she says. “I also like skiing and snowboarding. Recently my daughter and I started horseback riding, which is both relaxing and provides good exercise.”

Mura shares, “Over the years, we’ve gotten to know Dr. Trylska and her family, and simply put, they are amazing people. I see Dr. Trylska as having been equally successful in other areas of life as she’s been in biophysics. I think this reflects her great judgment in non-scientific areas, too, as well as her ability to balance many streams of dedication — family, science, and career. I mention this because I think it’s helpful for anyone embarking on a professional career in biophysics to be cognizant of this, and know that it’s possible.”