Dr Pawel Mordaka

  • Assistant Research Professor
Dr Pawel Mordaka

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About

Pawel Mordaka is an Assistant Research Professor at the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge.

Research

Research Group

Plant Metabolism

Research Overview

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Plant Metabolism group, specialising in synthetic biology and genome engineering technologies. My work focuses on designing and constructing new biological functions in algal and plant systems. Specifically, my research involves engineering chloroplast genomes and employing synthetic biology approaches to redesign and optimise genetic elements. This includes the development of vitamin-responsive genetic circuits in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to introduce complex genetic traits. I am involved in projects funded by major research programs, such as the BBSRC sLoLa and the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) Synthetic Plants initiative.

Publications

Selected publications

Chlamydomonas chloroplast genes tolerate compression of the genetic code to just 51 codons 3 December 2025 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Pawel M Mordaka, Kitty Clouston, Jing Cui, Andre Holzer, Harry O Jackson, Saul Purton & Alison G Smith Regulation of nucleus-encoded trans-acting factors allows orthogonal fine-tuning of multiple transgenes in the chloroplast of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii 28 December 2024 Plant Biotechnology Journal Pawel Mateusz Mordaka, Kitty Clouston, Aleix Gorchs-Rovira, Catherine Sutherland, Daniel Qingyang Zhang, Katrin Geisler, Payam Mehrshahi & Alison Gail Smith CpPosNeg: A positive-negative selection strategy allowing multiple cycles of marker-free engineering of the Chlamydomonas plastome 4 May 2022 Biotechnology Journal Harry O Jackson, Henry N Taunt, Paweł M Mordaka, Sujata Kumari, Alison G Smith & Saul Purton The Algal Chloroplast as a Testbed for Synthetic Biology Designs Aimed at Radically Rewiring Plant Metabolism 24 September 2021 Frontiers in Plant Science Harry O Jackson, Henry N Taunt, Pawel M Mordaka, Alison G Smith & Saul Purton Start-Stop Assembly: a functionally scarless DNA assembly system optimized for metabolic engineering 20 November 2018 Nucleic Acids Research George M Taylor, Paweł M Mordaka & John T Heap