19 September 2024 – Rita Sinka’s research into fruit fly reproductive processes in the last 15 years has led to a new collaboration which may answer key questions about human infertility. “Drosophila melanogaster has a very big sperm – comparatively 32 times bigger than human sperm, but the basic structures are very, very similar,” Sinka says. “I started to work on spermatogenesis because it’s a great system to model basic cell biological questions, like organ changes during development, and tissue-specific gene regulation and tissue-specific cell organelle development.”
Initially focused on the role of membrane transport during germ cell formation and spermatogenesis, her lab also undertook genetic screening and analysis of Drosophila testis. “We identified many gene products which are probably responsible for the late development of the spermatids, when there are huge changes – an approximately 10 micrometre develops to 1.8 millimetres in size,” Sinka says.
Fortunately, her university in Szeged includes a Centre for Reproductive Medicine. “We started a collaboration to try to find the human orthologs of what we had identified in Drosophila. Actually, it was very like when I wrote my first grant!” she says. “I proposed in my EMBO Installation Grant that in the future we can understand better human sperm development. Hopefully based on our research we can move a little further and try to identify factors which could contribute to human infertility.”
After completing her PhD at what is now the HUN-REN Biological Research Centre Szeged, Sinka moved to England for a postdoctoral position at the University of Cambridge studying cell cycle regulation. A further postdoc role followed at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in EMBO Member Sean Munro’s group working on membrane transport. After six years away including starting a family, she was keen to return to Szeged.
“The research community here is very supportive, and I had very good connections at the BRC and the university as well. They offered me a position at the university, but unfortunately, they didn’t have any start-up money to establish a research group,” Sinka says. “The EMBO Installation Grant in 2009 basically offered me a very flexible opportunity to establish my own lab. Without that support, I probably would never have been able to establish my own lab. I bought equipment, and I managed to hire very good colleagues, a postdoc and a technician.”
The move back to Szeged also gave Sinka the opportunity to change direction and start work on spermatogenesis – utilizing the different skills developed throughout her career. “I’m focusing on basic research. The infertility collaboration is very important for me, and hopefully, that can develop in the near future – basic research is the field where I’m more comfortable, but I definitely want to understand better the human relevance of our findings,” she says.
The EMBO grant was also a ‘gateway to other things’ – including funding from the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NRDIO). Sinka says the environment for early career researchers in Hungary is now more positive than in the past, due to two national funding schemes designed to help young scientists establish their own lab, run by the NRDIO, and the Hungarian Academy of Scientists. “They are quite competitive, but it’s a good start,” Sinka says. “But definitely I think EMBO support is very important – not only for the young scientists here in Hungary, but also the more established scientists, as well as the connection you get with EMBO and with EMBO-related institutes.”
