DOCTORAL
CANDIDATES
Background
I began my academic training in 2019 with a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry at Ulm University, which included a nine-month ERASMUS scholarship at the University of Oulu. I subsequently obtained a cum laude Master’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences from Utrecht University, where I developed a strong interest in histone acylation and epigenetic gene regulation. My interest in histone acylation especially developed during my master’s research at Utrecht University under Tuncay Baubec, where I investigated dynamic binding patterns of histone acylation reader domains in mouse embryonic stem cells using engineered chromatin readers.
This work sparked my curiosity in understanding how acylation-dependent chromatin regulation operates in physiologically and pathologically relevant contexts. Therefore, I subsequently joined the group of Peter Ratcliffe at the University of Oxford, under a Neijbakker-Morra stipend, where I employed a transgenic mouse model to study the synergistic involvement of hypoxia and an acylation reader protein in early molecular events during clear cell renal cell carcinoma development.
Research
My doctoral project with Sophie Trefely at the Babraham Institute investigates how cellular metabolism directly shapes gene regulation by controlling the nuclear availability of key metabolites. Using macrophage polarisation as a model system, I aim to examine how nuclear acyl-CoA compartmentalisation regulates gene expression in a highly metabolically plastic immune cell type. While the nucleus has traditionally been considered metabolically passive, emerging evidence suggests that it maintains locally regulated pools of metabolites that act as substrates for chromatin modifications.
I will employ state-of-the-art quantitative mass spectrometry and next-generation sequencing approaches to define how nuclear metabolite availability influences histone acylation landscapes, chromatin accessibility, and transcriptional programs in both immortalised and primary macrophages. By studying how the availability and subcellular distribution of histone acylation substrates influence chromatin structure and transcriptional programs, this project seeks to define how nuclear metabolite compartmentalisation shapes the balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory gene expression and, ultimately, immune cell function.