Members

Dr Doug Vernimmen (Group Leader)

Doug Vernimmen read Biology (BSc) and Molecular Biology (MSc) and gained his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Liège (Belgium) in 2003. His work was under the supervision of Dr Rosita Winkler (Department of Pathology, Prof Boniver), and was focused on the characterisation of an enhancer element involved in the overexpression of an oncogene in breast cancers. Afterwards, he moved to the University of Oxford to work at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine as an MRC Postdoctoral fellow, under the supervision of Prof Doug Higgs (Molecular Haematology Unit). Using a-globin regulation as a model, he showed the role of enhancer elements in the recruitment of transcription factors, but also chromosomal looping and epigenetic changes required for gene transcription. During these years, he has developed an international reputation in the chromatin biology field, and more particularly in chromosome looping studies where I developed a quantitative method to measure interaction between different DNA elements (q3C, Chromosome Conformation Capture). Overall, his work has always been dedicated on the understanding of how mammalian genes are switched on and off during differentiation to control cell fate and to specify different lineages, but also how genes are abnormally regulated in genetic diseases such as cancer and thalassaemia.

In 2012, he took a lecturer position at The University of Edinburgh through a Chancellor’s Fellowship, to run his research group at The Roslin Institute. His research interest originally covered the transcription activity in individual cells and the epigenetic regulation during haematopoiesis in human and more recently moved to myogenesis in Atlantic Salmon addressing the same questions in the context of whole genome duplication.

Ulduz Sobhiafshar (postdoc)

Ulduz (Uli) completed her BSc in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Tehran in Iran. She then moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where she completed her MSc and PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Boğaziçi University. Her graduate research focused on IRF4-driven epigenetic changes in melanoma and understanding the downstream effects of targeted therapy. She then moved to Edinburgh to join the Roslin Institute as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Chromatin group. Her current research focuses on myogenesis in Atlantic salmon in the context of post-duplication divergence at the single-cell level.

Linjing Lan (PhD Student)

Linjing did a Bachelor's in Biological Science with a focus on Aquatic Biology, and then completed her Master's at East China Normal University, where she did some fascinating, published research on bat genome evolution—specifically looking at bat conservation genomics and chromosomal evolution. She then moved to Edinburgh to pursue a PhD at the Roslin Institute, supervised by Doug Vernimmen and Dan Macqueen where she is combining her background in evolutionary biology with fish gene regulation. Her current project focuses on understanding myogenic regulatory evolution following the salmonid whole genome duplication.