Alicede Bernardy Sigoyer
Academic and Work Experience Prior to Sept 2023 Programme Start
I moved to London to pursue a BSc in Medical Biosciences at Imperial College. During my second and third year, I had the opportunity to learn about iPSC maintenance, reprogramming, and cloning. I also participated in establishing a cerebral organoid differentiation protocol in the Germline and Pluripotency lab, in the aim of modelling intracranial germ cell tumours.
PhD Programme- Year 1- MRes and Project Rotations
My first rotation was in Corinne Houart's lab, where I aimed at understanding the sub cellular location of mutant FOXG1 in zebrafish, as well as testing antisense oligonucleotide therapies for iPSC-derived models of FOXG1 microcephaly.
My second rotation was in Jernej Ule's lab where I tried to use Cas13 and U7snRNPs to modify specific alternative polyadenylation events.
My final rotation was in Eugene Makeyev's lab, where I aimed at using antisense oligonucleotides to modulate the splicing of C9ORF72 in iPSC and neuronal models of C9ALS/FTD.
PhD Programme- Years 2 to 4 - Doctoral Studies
My PhD project is supervised by Jernej Ule and Eugene Makeyev. My first goal is to analyse the proteome of nuclear speckles using proximity labelling. This will enable understanding of the proteins involved in nuclear speckles dynamics which have been found to host regulatory mechanisms for disordered-proteins. Potentially this work could open therapeutic avenues to target disordered protein homeostasis, such as in neurodegeneration where they are often dysregulated.
