Vanessza Fentor (BSc(Hons), MSc)

Thesis title: Structural effects of cross-kingdom miRNA on regulation of RNA function in cancer

Biography

Background

Obtained my undergraduate degree at the University of Dundee specialising in Bioinformatics. Proceeded to pursue a masters degree in Data-Intensive Analysis at the University of St Andrews.

Current research interests

Medicinal plants contain microRNAs, small sequence of non-coding RNA, which potentially could contribute to both intra- and inter-kingdom signaling. The miRNAs can modulate molecular mechanisms associated with human health and disease. The aim of this project is to investigate the potential anticancer activity of miRNA from specific medicinal plants against cancer cell lines. This will include (i) to define the target mRNAs in human cancer cells using computational tools that exploit RNAseq to define both miRNA and structural targets in mRNA and (ii) to understand if such miRNAs that target mRNA species could interfere with cell growth parameters.
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