Expertise: Epigenetics, Genomic Imprinting, Reprogramming, iPSCs
Short Bio:
Maria Arez is a 3rd year PhD student in bioengineering, specialized in epigenetics of stem cells. She completed her BSc at FCUL (2016) and her MSc at FCT (2018). Maria’s work was focused on genomic imprinting defects that arise during reprogramming of murine induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). In this work she found that the sex of donor cells and the culture medium formulations can impact the epigenetic defects of iPSCs. As she wanted to pursue this topic, she applied for PhD in Bioengineering at iBB, to study epigenetics in the context of human iPSCs. Her work is now focused in the generation of human iPSCs free of epigenetic defects.
Research Focus:
Epigenetics of induced pluripotent stem cells
Arez, M., Eckersley-Maslin, M., Klobučar, T., von Gilsa Lopes, J., Krueger, F., Mupo, A., Raposo, AC., Oxley, D., Mancino, S., Gendrel, A-V., Bernardes de Jesus, B., da Rocha, S. T. (2022). Imprinting fidelity in mouse iPSCs depends on sex of donor cell and medium formulation. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33013-5
Klobučar, T., Kreibich, E., Krueger, F., Arez, M., Pólvora-Brandão, D., von Meyenn, F., da Rocha, S. T., & Eckersley-Maslin, M. (2020). IMPLICON: an ultra-deep sequencing method to uncover DNA methylation at imprinted regions. Nucleic Acids Research. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa567