Josephine Scoble
D.Phil Student
Autobiography
From 2001 to 2006 I studied a BSc in Biology with Physical Geography at the Keele University in Staffordshire. During my undergraduate studies I took the opportunity to take a ‘year in industry’ (European Leonardo grant) at the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France, where I studied the adult stage of the digenic trematode parasite worm, Schistosoma mansoni, under the supervision of Dr Colette Dissous. I looked at the then newly discovered RTK-like receptor and its possible affinity to insulin using a yeast two-hybrid assay.
In 2007 I continued at Keele University doing an MRes course through which I took up another Leonardo grant that took me to the south of France, Montpellier, where I studied the genetics of the Leishmania tropica protist parasite in a geographical and evolutionary context. I studied under the supervision of Dr Christophe Ravel in association with the Université Montpellier 1. We used an MLST-like approach to look at the SNP variation and patterns within three chromosomes of the parasite to help visualise haplotypes and their arrangements among global strains.
Current Research Activities
I started a DPhil at the Oxford University in October 2008 where I am the student of Professor Thomas Cavalier-Smith. My DPhil project is looking at the taxonomy, ecology, and biogeography of two groups of silica-scaled zooflagellates - thaumatomonads (phylum Cercozoa) and the chrysomonad genus Paraphysomonas . I am also interested in centrohelid heliozoa. I am using molecular techniques (principally SSU rDNA sequencing and PCR/ clone library analyses using group- and lineage-specific primers), light and electron microscopy, and phylogenetics to understand more about the abundance of these organisms, their diversity and distributions, and how/if scale morphology varies within species and maps onto phylogenetic trees. I will complete my project by 2012.
I have a keen interest in parasitological research, especially involving protists, which is one reason I am interested in learning about how diverse the protist kingdom is through my current DPhil. I hope to go back to protist parasite research after my studies in the Cavalier-Smith lab and use my knowledge and skills to unravel more about the diversity of protist parasites and their phylogenetics.
Theses
- M.Res. “Leishmania tropica, from chromosome to haplotype and back again.” Acknowledgements.