Murray Edwards College’s webinar series returns for 2025 and will run weekly from January until June.
If you want to learn what it would be like to study at Cambridge, explore the webinars on offer and sign up to register your interest in attending.
Delfi Dorussen - Applied Natural Sciences
Delfi Dorussen, a PhD student at the John Innes Centre investigating wheat genetics, will discuss her research and how her Cambridge Natural Sciences degree prepared her for her current role.
Decoding a Giant Genome
Wheat (Triticum aestivum) has a giant genome, almost six times the size of the human genome. This is in part due to its polyploid nature - while each human chromosome has two copies (one from each parent), wheat has six copies of each chromosome. Most genes are therefore present in six copies, each of which may differ slightly, affecting its expression and function. The large size and complex architecture of its genome has made wheat a challenging organism to study, despite it being the most widely cultivated crop globally and a cornerstone of food security. I will present my research, in which I use a combination of genetics, genomics, and transcriptomics to decipher gene expression patterns in wheat. Ultimately, knowing how genes are regulated in wheat will help us to decode agriculturally important traits and continue improving wheat for the future.
We think you will be interested in this webinar if you are currently studying: Chemistry, Mathematics, Further Maths, Biology, Physics and Geography.
For more information, about our webinar series, visit the Murray Edwards College website. Register your interest here.
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