Miss Çağla Kaya

Interests

For my bachelor's research project at the Duchen Lab at UCL, I used bioinformatics tools to analyse open access RNA sequencing datasets of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), iPSC-derived astrocytes, and iPSC-derived neural progenitor cells obtained from Down syndrome (DS) subjects and controls. Then, I quantified the transcription of a select set of genes using RT-PCR and found that the peroxiredoxin-6 gene was significantly upregulated in DS iPSC-astrocytes. I joined the Drosophila Connectomics group at the University of Cambridge in 2019 for five weeks to map the olfactory pathways in the fruit fly brain using specialised software called CATMAID. During my internship at the Duchen Lab at UCL, I conducted experiments on mitochondrial biology and pathophysiology. I practised techniques, including cell culture, cell respirometry, and confocal microscopy. At the Medical Genetics Molecular Biology Laboratory at Istanbul University, I performed experiments to detect genetic diseases.

Research Focus

Equipment

Cell culture

Computational modelling

Confocal microscopy

Fluorescence microscopy

Microscopy