Who am I?
A computational biologist interested in the X-chromosome. Currently doing a PhD in Colm Nestor’s group at Linköping University, Sweden. Outside of work I enjoy running, road cycling and chess.
What are my research interests?
My primary research interest lies in sex-bias in disease. Why are many autoimmune dieases more common in women, and why are infections often more severe in men? This is often associated with a difference in immune function or potential, where women have a more ‘active’ immune system. This is probably due to a multidude of factors, including differences in lifestyle, hormones and genetics. As someone who is fascinated by the latter, I want to focus my research on the genetic contributions of this disparity. As the X-chromosome is the largest genetic difference between men and women it is currently the focus of my research. To this end I look at direct measures of escape from X-chromosome inactivation (such as allele-specific expression) as well as indirect measures of escape such as sex-biased gene expression and DNA methylation.
What kind of work do I do?
I am a wet lab biologist by education (masters degree in Medical Biology from Linköping University), but for the last 4½ years I have worked exclusively with processing and analysing data. The projects I’m currently working on involves analysing whole exome/genome sequencing, RNA-seq (bulk and single-cell (10X and smart-seq2)) and DNA methylation array (EPIC) data. I also have brief experience analysing enrichment data (mainly CUT&Tag). I mainly work in bash and R.
Outside of research I teach in a bioinformatics and a ‘big data’ course where I created a RNA-seq data pipeline (from fastq files to edgeR output) for introducting topics such aligners, sequence quality metrics and differential gene expression analysis. I have also teached part of a statistical introductory course to Master Medical Biology students, mainly about statistical tests used for group comparisons and study design.