Susanne Bornelöv joins us from the CRUK Cambridge Institute. Over the years, Susanne's work has covered a range of areas, including histone modifications, functional genomics, RNA modifications, piRNAs and transposable elements. The common denominator has been a focus on molecular mechanisms by which the genome is controlled.
She tells us about her group's current work and plans for the future:
"My group specialise in large-scale data analysis and machine learning techniques to better understand gene regulation and genome evolution. We are currently focusing on the role of codon usage and how codon-level information impacts these processes. For this, we use a combination of omics data analysis, machine learning, and evolutionary genomics. For example, by analysing ribosome profiling data, we are able to study ribosome occupancy at single-codon levels, and by using AI-based methods, we aim to create an in-silico system to study fundamental principles underlying gene expression and protein production. You can find more details about us at our website (http://www.sblab.uk).
Here at Biochemistry, I plan to continue this research and also to establish a small wet-lab arm of my lab as well as collaborations with experimental groups. In the future, I hope to expand our research to additional regulatory layers (such as mRNA modifications and transcriptional regulation) and on how to use deep learning to design sequences and regulatory elements with desired properties."