Matthew Berg is a postdoctoral scholar working in Dr. Judit Villén lab’s in the Department of Genome Sciences. He received his PhD from the University of Western Ontario under the supervision of Dr. Chris Brandl where he studied how mutations in transfer RNA (tRNA) genes alter the translation of the genetic code and affect protein synthesis in a process called mistranslation.

His current research explores the implications and applications of mistranslating tRNAs on a systems biology level. Using mistranslating tRNA variants, Matt is creating protein variants across all expressed proteins and applying biochemical selections coupled to mass spectrometry to determine the impact of thousands of mutations on protein function proteome-wide. His goal is to use this data to generate better variant prediction models and understand how mutations alter protein function. Matt is also interested in how mistranslating tRNA variants affect health and disease. Using mass spectrometry-based proteomics, Matt is measuring multiple aspects of the functional proteome and integrating these large datasets to understand how different tRNA variants affect cellular networks and biological processes.