Projects

We aim to investigate the evolutionary relationships between endogenous and exogenous retroviruses to understand how retroviruses originated and diversified.

We aim to understand how ancient retrovirus-like elements persist and propagate in marine animals despite host genome defence mechanisms.

We aim to investigate how Drosophila eugracilis maintains transposon silencing without ping-pong amplification and how its piRNA pathway has evolved.

We aim to identify how PIWI proteins regulate target mRNAs to control intestinal stem cell proliferation and tumour growth.

We aim to investigate how transposon activity and piRNA-mediated defence influence ovarian development and egg-chamber formation.

We aim to uncover the molecular mechanisms that control the timing of splicing during transcription.

This project focuses on how germ cells control the function of Sertoli cells.

Brain tumour models

Cancer Stem Cell Models

This project focuses on the role of H2A.B in spermatogenesis under heat stress.

The aim of this project is to better understand how the bacteria defend against viral infection and how we can take advantage of the bacteria defence system to harness it as a gene editing technology.

While there is no perfect model to simulate all the pathologies associated with human AMD, we use a growing number of approaches to better understand the progression of AMD and retinal degenerations in general. These models also serve to test the efficacy of novel AMD therapeutic and diagnostic pipelines.

Exosomes are paramount to the pathogenesis of a plethora of neurodegenerative diseases but their role in retinal degenerations remains largely unknown. At the Clear Vision Research Lab we study exosomes using several miRNA-centered approaches.

This project uses next generation sequencing (NGS) and mass spectrometry to investigate the possible existence of regulatory interactions between ribonucleic acids, enzymes and metabolites to connect gene expression and metabolism

This project focuses the role of H2A.B in Hodgkin Lymphoma.

We wish to address gaps in capability by using accurate read-outs of translation efficiency available to us and developing methods for parallel extraction of structural, isoform and RNA-binding protein positional data, together with ligand-specific ribosome localisation read-outs.

This project focuses on Cancer/Testis (C/T) antigens and their function.

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This project focuses on the role of the histone variant H2A.B3 on spermatogenesis.

Leukemia Models