Dr Aishwarya Jacob

I was born and raised in India where I finished my schooling and obtained my baccalaureate degree in Biotechnology.  After this, I flew all the way to the lovely midwestern state of Ohio, USA where I earned a PhD in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from The Ohio State University in Columbus. Following a brief stint as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, I decided to uproot myself once again and swapped all my dollars for pounds, potato chips for crisps and landed at the Cambridge University in 2016. My current interests include understanding how alternative pre-mRNA splicing, a crucial molecular step that determines the cell's functional transcriptome and by extension its proteome, plays a critical role in determining the functional and phenotypic status of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells (VSMCs). I use human embryonic stem cells to differentiate them into VSMCs (hES-VSMCs) and query how alternative splicing is regulated in these cells and how its manipulation affects their phenotypic behaviour.