Staff profile

I graduated from Durham University with a BSc in Natural Science (Biology and Chemistry). During my final year, I developed an interest in transposable elements. 

Now, I am working on the most prolific transposon in Arabidopsis, aptly named EVADE. This transposon's mRNA forms a secondary structure (known as an ENE) in its 3' UTR which allows it to evade poly(A) tail degradation and thereby improve mRNA survival and translation. This may be one of the reasons for EVADE's success. My future plans are to search for the ENE's protein binding partners using RNA-centric pulldown assays or TREX, as well as use methods such as cryoEM to further investigate the RNA's secondary structure architecture.