Dr Rebekah J. White
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
- Institute for Neuroscience and Cardiovascular Research
- College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine
Contact details
Research summary
My research expertise is in ageing, molecular biology, and bioinformatics in relation to nematode worms.
Nematodes have been used widely as model organisms for ageing research, in part due to their short lifespan, ease of rearing, and genetic tools available. The first ageing gene discovered, age-1, was in Caenorhabditis elegans.
Across the animal kingdom, proteins change differently within each tissue with ageing. This is challenging to study in C. elegans, as due to their small size, tissue dissection is limited. Therefore, as part of the Greiss research group, I am developing a new method to isolate proteins in C. elegans nematodes, from only a chosen tissue or cell type.
This will be achieved via genetic code expansion machinery incorporating non-canonical amino acids into the proteins of C. elegans. We can engineer this to only occur in the chosen tissue, meaning the proteins can be isolated and undergo proteomic analysis.
From this, our first application will be to create a comprehensive ageing protein profile for each tissue.
Affiliated research centres
Doctor of Philosophy in Biological Sciences, University of Exeter, 2019-2024
Master of Research in Evolution: From the Galapagos to the 21st century, University of Southampton, 2018-2019
Bachelor of Science in Biology (Hons), University of Southampton, 2015-2018