Lizzy+Sollars

I am studying for a PhD in Bioinformatics supervised by Richard Buggs at Queen Mary University of London, together with Anika Joecker at QIAGEN Aarhus (previously CLC bio). My project is focused on studying the genome of the European ash tree, //Fraxinus excelsior//. Ash trees in Europe have recently come under threat from a fungal pathogen causing the ash dieback disease, however there is a small fraction of the population which show evidence of low susceptibility. To enable other scientists to identify the genetic causes of this observed variation in susceptibility, I have assembled a reference genome sequence for a British ash tree, and made it publicly available on the British Ash Tree Project website, ashgenome.org. In collaboration with The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) we have produced a genome annotation with ~43,000 predicted genes, and also analysed resequencing data from 37 European ash trees. I am also leading a small experiment in studying DNA Methylation (epigenetic) differences between genetic clones of ash trees, where some genotypes are susceptible to ash dieback and some less so.
 * Research Interests**

Previously, I studied a BSc in Zoology at Cardiff University and a MSc in Analytical Genomics at the University of Birmingham, where my dissertation involved studying DNA Methylation patterns in the //Arabidopsis thaliana// genome.
 * Background**

British Ash Tree Genome project website INTERCROSSING blog QMUL departmental webpage LinkedIn Twitter@LizzySollars
 * Links**