PhD Project: Promoting Healthy Fish in Aquaculture by Genome-Wide Functional Annotation of Immune Responses
Supervisors:
Primary Supervisor: Prof. Sam Martin. School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen
Secondary Supervisor: Prof. Dan Macqueen, The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh
Postgraduate research
I’m in the first year of my PhD, funded through a Horizon 2020 EU project called AQUA-FAANG. The goal of this project is to enhance the fundamental understanding of the genomic basis for innate immune system in aquaculture species, at Aberdeen my focus will be on Atlantic salmon. I will be performing a challenge model on atlantic salmon to utilize the immune stimulation with established PAMPs of bacterial (inactivated Vibrio) and viral (Poly I:C) infection. Subsequently, functional annotation maps will be generated, which will define the regions of the genome that are activated by stimulation of innate immune mechanisms.
Biography and previous work
I previously graduated in Biomedical science at the University of Lincoln and master’s in molecular genetics at the Imperial College London. After completing my master’s degree, I worked at Xelect Ltd for 2 years as a scientific officer, this was where I was exposed to the aquaculture world. While working for Xelect, I developed my interest in aquaculture genetics.
