The winners of the 2026 ‘Ceské hlavičky’ competition have been announced. The Faculty of Science, Masaryk University – GENUS ‘Nature Around Us’ Award was presented to Karel Půbal from the Beroun Secondary School of Healthcare for his project ‘Computer-aided design of artificial proteins and their synthesis’. Congratulations.
Nine young people received the ‘Česká hlavička’ awards in Brno at the beginning of October this year. This competition stems from the ‘Česká hlava’ project, which has been promoting science and raising the profile of Czech scientists and engineers for many years. The ‘Česká hlavička’ awards were established in 2007 with the aim of recognising secondary school pupils with an interest in technology, the natural sciences or innovation.
The Faculty of Science at Masaryk University – GENUS ‘Nature Around Us’ prize was awarded to Karel Půbal from the Beroun Secondary School of Healthcare for his project ‘Computer-aided design of artificial proteins and their preparation’.
His work was, in fact, a glimpse into the past, but one that may help in the future, for example, with the design of new medicines. Karel Půbal’s research focused on the origins of life, specifically from the perspective of the formation of the first proteins. Proteins in the human body are made up of twenty different building blocks called amino acids, each of which has its own shape and function. However, according to current hypotheses, billions of years ago, nature had only about ten different amino acids at its disposal, from which the first proteins – and, gradually, all life on the planet – must have emerged. The medical student conducted an experiment to test whether functional proteins could be assembled from eight, six or just four different amino acids. He successfully assembled a protein from eight amino acids and confirmed that it forms the expected three-dimensional structure, holds together under laboratory conditions and is functional. Although proteins consisting of six and four amino acids were also produced, they were present in such small quantities and were so unstable that it was not possible to reliably demonstrate whether they formed the required structure. These findings help us to better understand how life on Earth could have begun in the first place. They also open the door to the future: to the design of entirely new medicines.
Photo: České hlavy
Jarmila Mlčoušková works part-time as a researcher at the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University. Although she is a biophysicist by training and profession, she also writes books. This autumn will see the publication of her second romantic comedy set in a scientific environment, as well as her second...
