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 biological pathways and it is well documented that smoking can be linked to large differences in DNA methylation as Alex discusses today. We also discuss the need and importance of giving consideration to the role that society may play in studies such as these. Stay tuned to find out more about epigenetics, DNA methylation and biosocial research.

Contact alex here: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/people/aandra

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 series, in an accessible and hopefully fun, entertaining way.

Ellie studies male fertility and the morphology of sperm, whilst Livy studies the link between air pollution and DNA methylation and the epigenome, two different but important areas of research. In this episode, we give an overview of our research aims as well as the rationale behind why our research is so vital. Hope you enjoy getting to know your hosts and that you tune in to our next episodes to hear some more genomics!

The genomics lab twitter: https://twitter.com/theGenomicsLab

Livs twitter: https://twitter.com/Olivia_A_Grant

Ellies twitter: https://twitter.com/Ellie_M_Watson

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 her research aims to study the regenerative mechanisms in peripheral neurons, and identifying which molecular targets need to be activated to achieve regenerative effects, which become promising targets for boosting spinal cord regeneration. We also discuss the role that epigenetics plays in this neurological research. Jess predominantly works in the mouse nervous system, and she discusses with us some of the limitations, ethical considerations and benefits of a mouse model for this line of research. Jess will welcome any questions or feedback so we have provided her contact information below. Hope you all enjoy our first episode! (See below for links)

Jess's twitter: https://twitter.com/Jess_Chadwick

Jess's email: [email protected]

Jess's academic Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neuro.genomics.jess/

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 how her lab and the Target 5000 initiative use sequencing techniques to both discover novel genetic variants, and validate previous findings of genetic variants involved in the cause of IRDs. Laura discusses the impact of IRD on quality of life, the scale of the problem and the future of this work in terms of improving the diagnostics of IRDs.

Laura's twitter: https://twitter.com/PhD_With_LauraLaura's research paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/11/1/105/htmLaura's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phd_with_laura/

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 similarly to state-of-the-art tools, but is an explainable model and provides biological insights into binding mechanisms of transcription factors to DNA. His research focused on investigating the binding mechanisms of three TFs that are known architectural proteins CTCF, BEAF-32 and su(Hw) in three Drosophila cell lines (BG3, Kc167 and S2). Aside from his research, Patrick enjoys coding, astrophysics and is now working in the exciting field of spatial transcriptomics! We also discuss the use of clinical data in genomics research, learning to code and bioinformatics. Hope you all enjoy! (See below for links)

Patrick's twitter: https://twitter.com/pcnmartin 

Patrick's research paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2001037020304736?via%3Dihub

ChIPAnalyser Bioconductor package: https://www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/ChIPanalyser.html

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 genomics research!