{"id":22053,"date":"2017-06-09T08:51:49","date_gmt":"2017-06-09T06:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emblog.embl.de\/ells\/?post_type=schoolambassador&#038;p=22053"},"modified":"2021-06-18T15:40:04","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T15:40:04","slug":"embl-school-ambassador-irma-querques","status":"publish","type":"ambassadors","link":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/ambassadors\/embl-school-ambassador-irma-querques\/","title":{"rendered":"EMBL School Ambassador Irma Querques"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"vf-tabs\"><ul class=\"vf-tabs__list\" data-vf-js-tabs=\"true\"><li class=\"vf-tabs__item\"><a class=\"vf-tabs__link\" href=\"#vf-tabs__section-026a81eb-e6cc-4a93-b8c7-2458770f0b83\">Profile<\/a><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"vf-tabs-content\" data-vf-js-tabs-content=\"true\">\n<section class=\"vf-tabs__section\" id=\"vf-tabs__section-026a81eb-e6cc-4a93-b8c7-2458770f0b83\"><h2>Profile<\/h2>\n<p>Hello! My name is Irma and I am a PhD student at EMBL Heidelberg in the Barabas lab. I grew up in a small town in the south of Italy, Lucera, famous for its wonderful castle and I studied Biotechnology in Bologna at the oldest University in Europe. For my Master thesis project, I joined EMBL and therefore I moved to Heidelberg, which reminds me both of my hometown and of my University city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Working in the Barabas lab, I became fascinated by transposons, DNA parasites that have traversed the whole tree of life by jumping within and between their host genomes. My PhD project focuses on <em>Sleeping Beauty<\/em>, a transposon that last moved in the fish genomes more than 10 million years ago and has been awakened from its long sleep by scientists. During my PhD, I investigated the second life of <em>Sleeping Beauty<\/em>: I analyzed how it jumps in the genomes after its resurrection and I developed a method to make it cut and paste DNA on demand in a tightly controlled way. This method is now being applied to genetically modify human cells so that they could recognize and attack cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My PhD project perfectly exemplifies what I like most about science: every discovery opens up new avenues to explore, attracting scientists to even different research fields. Thus, the exchange of findings and thoughts is the basis of research development. I am looking forward to talking about science with high school students: they have always the most creative and exciting ideas to share!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":647,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-22053","ambassadors","type-ambassadors","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","country-italy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ambassadors\/22053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ambassadors"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ambassadors"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/ells\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}