Biography

My name is Rebecca Berrens and I am a molecular biologist studying the role of transposable elements in early mammalian development. I did my undergraduate at the University of Heidelberg. I did my Bachelor thesis at EMBL in the lab of Matthias Hentze and studied miRNAs and was fascinated by the function of these small RNAs in the cell. I then did my Master's at CSHL in Greg Hannon's lab and learned the first time that in our genome there are transposable elements which can jump in the genome. During my PhD in Wolf Reiks lab at the Babraham institute in Cambridge I studied how the genome controls transposable elements by epigenetic modifications in early development. Now as a postdoc at CRUK-CI I am studying how transposable element expression controls gene expression during cell fate decision. This study will help to unravel the intricate relationship between the selfish jumping genes and our genome.