Roman Tuma

principal investigator
HPLC and solution scattering techniques
rtuma at prf.jcu.cz
(+420)-38-777-6235
C 01 026
Part time also at University of Leeds, U.K.


  • M.Sc. 1990, Charles University, Prague, Czechoslovakia
  • Ph.D. 1996, University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, 1996-1999, University of Alabama at Birmingham
  • Group Leader, 1999-2004, University of Helsinki, Finland
  • Research Fellow of Academy of Finland, 2004-2008, University of Helsinki
  • Associate Professor/Reader in Biophysics, 2007-present, University of Leeds, U.K.
  • PI, 2017-present, University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic

Research Interests and keywords:
1) RNA virus assembly – avian reovirus
2) ATP driven molecular machines – translocases and helicases, SecYEG, SecA
3) Structure of bacterial light harvesting assemblies – chlorosomes, Chlorobaculum tepidum
4) RNA structure and folding – polymer physics

Key recent publications: 


Patel, N., S. J. White, R. F. Thompson, R. Bingham, E. U. Weiss, D. P. Maskell, A. Zlotnick, E. Dykeman, R. Tuma, R. Twarock, N. A. Ranson, and P. G. Stockley. 2017. HBV RNA pre-genome encodes specific motifs that mediate interactions with the viral core protein that promote nucleocapsid assembly. Nature microbiology 2:17098.

Allen, W. J., R. A. Corey, P. Oatley, R. B. Sessions, S. A. Baldwin, S. E. Radford, R. Tuma, and I. Collinson. 2016. Two-way communication between SecY and SecA suggests a Brownian ratchet mechanism for protein translocation. Elife 5. e15598

Borodavka, A., S. W. Singaram, P. G. Stockley, W. M. Gelbart, A. Ben-Shaul, and R. Tuma. 2016. Sizes of Long RNA Molecules Are Determined by the Branching Patterns of Their Secondary Structures. Biophys J 111:2077-2085.

Borodavka, A., J. Ault, P. G. Stockley, and R. Tuma. 2015. Evidence that avian reovirus sigma NS is an RNA chaperone: implications for genome segment assortment. Nucleic Acids Res 43:7044-7057.



Full list of publications