Affiliation: Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Tslil Ast, PhD, is a postdoctoral associate at the lab of Prof. Vamsi K Mootha jointly based at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Her research focuses on iron-sulfur (Fe-S) cluster generation in human health and disease. To this end, she applies genetic, biochemical, and cell biological tools to better understand this essential pathway and its interplay with other processes. She found that a key mitochondrial factor in Fe-S cluster biogenesis, FXN, whose loss is linked to the most common inherited ataxia, can be made redundant in hypoxia. Current work is focused on building on this finding to generate a safe and practical therapeutic approach for patients. This postdoctoral work was supported by EMBO and the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation and earned her the 2021 ESL scientific excellence award. Previously, she earned her PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science, studying protein import into the endoplasmic reticulum with Prof. Maya Schuldiner.