Dr Emma Briggs

Having focused on genetics during her undergraduate studies, Emma moved into parasitology to complete a PhD under the guidance of Dr Richard McCulloch at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology (WCIP), Glasgow. Her thesis focused on understanding the distribution of RNA-DNA hybrids, or R-loops, in the genome of the African trypanosome, and how these important epigenetic features are processed by RNase H enzymes. To follow up these findings, Emma remained as a post-doc within the McCulloch group for a further year and was able to identify additional proteins which interact with such structures.
Emma has since started to pursue her own line of research as a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow, working with Prof Keith Matthews, University of Edinburgh and Dr Thomas Otto, WCIP. Over the course of the fellowship Emma is applying single-cell transcriptomics to African trypanosomes in order to dissect life cycle transitions, identify novel factors driving differentiation and study the role of transcript-regulating proteins.