Why is application work important?
Application work ensures there is a strong interface between customers and the development team which very important for the continous improvement and development of new products and applications. This is essential in producing products that meet the customer and market need.
Why is your work in single cell research important?
Many important biological questions can only be answered on the level of individual cells. This ranges from looking at somatic mutations in cancer cells to rare populations within a microbiome. It is particularly important in cancer research. Single cell RNA-Seq can look into tumour heterogeneity and identify mutations in small cell populations which might affect the treatment of choice significantly.
What do you think the future holds for single cell research?
In the future, we’ll able to create systems that are fully automated all the way through from preparing single cells to the actual sequencing, which will enable systems to be ready to use for even less trained staff.
In terms of future applications – one big application will be in diagnostics, specifically in clinical applications where single cell data will be used to determine the best treatment for each individual patient. This will be very useful in the development of personalised medicine.
What do you hope the impact of your work will be?
I hope that my work will allow users to effortlessly perform single cell research by optimizing experiments and application notes. I also hope to develop new applications and equipment that shape the future of single cell biology.
How did you come to be working on this topic/in this field?
During my PhD, I was much more interested in the methodology of experiments and the development of equipment. I also ran a large amount of training which has been hugely helpful when teaching customers in workshops and webinars. I have also always been interested in application work and my role is the perfect mix of application, training and research.
What’s your favourite part of your job?
I find that discussing with customers how they can develop their ideas and protocols on our systems very exciting. As our systems are hugely flexible, there is a wide range of research which can be done and this ensures our systems can be used for many applications and protocols and can meet a wide range of customer needs.
Interested in talking to one of our application specialists about how to perform your single cell experiments? Contact us today
