Pooran Dewari
Bean Group, Core Scientist
Current research
I am a core scientist funded by BBSRC. After spending a couple of ‘AQUA-FAANG’ years working on Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout, I have now ventured into the Oyster world! I am currently deploying CAGE (Cap Analysis of Gene Expression) assay to map TSS in poorly annotated Pacific oyster genome. Another interesting project I am currently working on aims to develop mixed-species SNP-arrays to map genetic variation in four commercially important Qatari fish species.
Favourite aquaculture species
I am slowly falling for oyster genome for so many unknowns.
Background
I spent my childhood and schooling days in a small Himalayan town — Almora. After receiving my master's degree in biochemistry, I moved to the southern part of India for a CSIR-funded PhD degree at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. My PhD project identified transcriptional regulation of small RNAs in budding yeast facilitated by histone chaperone Asf1. In 2014, I moved to the UK and joined the Pollard lab at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh as a postdoctoral fellow and developed CRISPR-based methods for scalable and efficient epitope tagging in brain tumour stem cells. In 2020, to pursue my bioinformatics aspirations, I joined Dan Macqueen’s lab at the Roslin Institute to undertake ChIP-seq part of AQUA-FAANG consortium. My current role as a core scientist in Tim Bean’s group involves a mix of both wet and dry lab work.
- [2004 – 2006] MSc in Biochemistry, India
- [2006 – 2013] PhD, CCMB, India
- [2014 – 2020] Postdoc, CRM, University of Edinburgh
- [2020 – 2023] Postdoc, Roslin Institute
- [2023 - present] Core Scientist, Roslin Institute
Interests, hopes and dreams
I love travelling. My other hobbies include wild swimming in cold lochs and wild camping in the Scottish Highlands. I often daydream about working remotely somewhere in the countryside.