Join us today as we speak to an inspirational Woman in STEM, Sethlina Naa Dodua Aryee, raised in Ghana, who moved to the University of Cambridge to complete her PhD in sustainable food production through the use of genomic and bioinformatic tools - a global issue that she has been passionate about for her whole life. Sethlina speaks to us today about her research into the genomics of the indigenous Ashanti Dwarf pig, following cross-breeding of the indigenous species with some overseas...

In order to celebrate International Women's Day 2021, we have picked two inspirational role models at our University and invited them to speak to us about their experiences of being a woman in science. We learn about their varied and exciting careers, and then we discuss all of our personal experiences of being a woman in science - from how we were inspired into the field, what we feel are the biggest barriers and how to overcome them, as well as some really great advice from both Dr Louise...

In today's episode, we are excited to be talking to Dr Christopher Clarkson, currently based at UCL, where he has just started a post-doctoral research position. In 2020, Dr. Clarkson completed his PhD at the University of Essex where he investigated changes of nucleosome positioning and 3D chromatin organization! In today's episode, we discuss how CTCF binding strength correlates with nucleosome repeat length and what the implications are of this on gene regulation. We further discuss how...

In today's episode, we are privileged to be speaking to Professor Darren Griffin, who is currently based at the University of Kent, where he is the director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Reproduction, and Professor of Genetics. Darren is President of the International Chromosome and Genome Society, and is a world leader in the field of cytogenetics, performing the first successful cytogenetic preimplantation genetic diagnosis, as well as playing a large role in the...

Don't miss today's episode, as we are joined by Nicky Hales, who runs a Genomics Core Facility in Texas! This episode is a little different to usual, as we are focusing more on a genomics based career path, and excitingly, it's a career path we did not know much about - so it was a real learning curve to talk to Nicky. Nicky explains to us how she found herself in this position, what a Core Facility is (we had no idea before chatting to Nicky!), the significance of core facilities, and what a...

Something a little different - our first BONUS episode. Today we talk to Brad and Joe about our experience of using social media as a networking an science communications tool. Brad and Joe briefly introduce their research (for once, not genomics......) and we then discuss the pros and cons of a number of social media platforms, as well as the power of social media as a networking and opportunities tool. We had so much fun filming this episode, so we hope you enjoy listening to something a...

Welcome to Episode 6 of The Genomics Lab! On today's episode we talk to Alexandria Andrayas who is a PhD candidate in the Soc-B Centre for doctoral training which is a new and unique programme in biosocial research. The programme is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council. It combines the strengths of the University of Essex, Manchester and UCL. The impact of smoking on health can be mediated through several...

Welcome to Episode 5 of The Genomics Lab! On today's episode we talk to Jareth Wolfe who is a final year PhD student at the University of Essex. We talk to Jareth today about his work on using explainable artificial intelligence models in order to identify enhancers in DNA. Jareth explores the link between histone modifications and enhancers, explains the importance of enhancers, and gives us an insight into how his model was developed and trained to identify these enhancers. We also discuss...

Welcome to the introductory episode of the Genomics Lab, where we discuss with you our motivation behind creating this podcast, and briefly discuss our own research areas. Before we meet our guests in each episode, we would love to introduce ourselves - Eleanor and Olivia (Ellie and Liv!), two second year PhD researchers at the University of Essex. Our research is within the Genomics department at Essex, and we aim to bring current, exciting and novel research to you through this podcast...

Welcome to Episode 2 of The Genomics Lab! On today's episode we talk to Dr.Patrick CN Martin who is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen. He completed his PhD in Dr Radu Zabets lab in 2020 where he investigated the binding mechanisms of transcription factors to DNA. His research involved development of an R package, ChIPAnalyser. A user-friendly, versatile and powerful R/Bioconductor package predicting and modelling the binding of TFs to DNA. ChIPanalyser performs...

Welcome to Episode 1 of The Genomics Lab! On today's episode we talk to Jess Chadwick who is a third year PhD researcher at Imperial College London. She is doing her PhD in molecular neuroscience, investigating the molecular mechanisms of axonal regeneration after spinal cord injury. Jess talks to us about how axonal injury in the spinal cord usually results in no regeneration, but how in the peripheral nervous system, neurons can re-grow and regenerate to a certain extent. Jess explains how...

Welcome to Episode 3 of The Genomics Lab! On today's episode we talk to Laura Whelan, who is a PhD researcher at the School of Genetics & Microbiology at the Trinity College Dublin. Laura is part of the Target 5000 programme; the first large-scale study to apply next generation sequencing to the Irish inherited retinal diseases (IRD) patient population. Laura discusses with us some of the causes of IRDs, the different types of IRD, the kind of inheritance involved in these diseases, and...

Subscribe for free now and listen to the first episode of The Genomics Lab before anyone else! Welcome to the Genomics Lab! We are Olivia Grant and Eleanor Watson, two PhD candidates in the Genomics research group at the University of Essex. In this podcast, we chat to researchers in the field and speak to them about their current research, saving you time trying to cram in literature reading. So come join us in the genomics lab, where Liv and Ellie first met and shared their love for...