I am an experienced molecular biologist with expertise in genomics, transcriptomics, 16s Amplicon seq, functional genetics, neuroscience, immunohistochemistry, and imaging techniques (confocal immunofluorescence imaging). I am proficient in leveraging multiple sequencing technologies, including Illumina, Oxford Nanopore, and 10X Genomics; from nucleotide extraction, QC, library prep, and sequencing to bioinformatics pipelines. My passion lies in molecular biology research leveraging novel sequencing technologies for the insights they generate to solve complicated puzzles.

My current project focuses on understanding the asymmetric division pattern of neural stem cells (neuroblasts) at the molecular and cellular resolution. I am utilizing single cell RNA sequencing approach for comparing gene expression profiles by comparing wild type vs RNAi KO brains correlating their impacts on long-term memory (LTM). Alongside, I'm utilizing Immunohistochemistry and in-situ hybridization methods using different neuroblast and ganglion mother cell division markers and in situ probes for both WT and RNAi animal brains to confirm the asymmetric localization of GMC marker proteins and for locating mRNA transcripts. The long-term goal of this project is to understand the molecular mechanisms of LTM which can inform the therapeutic approaches for treating neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s in which LTM is impacted

During my PhD, I sequenced whole genomes of two non-model insects using multiple sequencing technologies. I constructed long read sequencing libraries using the Nanopore MinION in-house to sequence the genomes. The sequencing libraries were also generated using Illumina and 10X Genomics linked-read sequencing technologies to create hybrid genomes of high quality and contiguity. I also did mRNAseq for annotating the weevil genomes. Besides, I carried out 16S amplicon sequencing starting from nucleotide extraction to PCR/qPCR, and NGS library prep, QC to data analysis to compare their microbiome profiles within and between three invasive insect species. For dry lab part, I have experience handling multiple sequencing data for analyzing them using various bioinformatics pipelines. I have experience working with HPC resources, including the SLURM environment, for assembling and annotating de novo genomes and Amplicon sequencing data. I am proficient in using Unix/Shell, Bash, Jupyter Notebook, and programming languages including R.