Marta Pérez Alcántara

I am a final year DPhil Student in Genomic Medicine and Statistics at the University of Oxford, supervised by Prof. Mark McCarthy and Dr Ben Davies. I investigate the role of islet development in T2D susceptibility through the analysis of an hiPSC differentiation model of insulin-producing beta cells from the pancreas. I use bioinformatics analysis to integrate several omics datasets with the aim of identifying genes involved in each stage of islet development (particularly within T2D-associated loci) and characterize temporal patterns and networks of gene expression and regulation. My DPhil also has a laboratory component: I use CRISPR to modify the expression of the genes highlighted by the bioinformatics analysis in the beta cell differentiation model, to assess experimentally their involvement in islet development. I aim to position myself in the space between experimentalist and data analyst, trying to bridge the gap between genomics and genetics to unravel the biology of human complex traits.