Johana is a Postdoctoral researcher in Macaulay group at EI. My first degree was in Microbiology during which I had a very short but exciting experience investigating the use of Bacillus thuringiensis to control yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) at CIB, Medellin, Colombia.
During my Masters at Universidad Nacional de Colombia I became interested in the molecular epidemiology of Tuberculosis (TB), after which I had a very successful career as a Scientist within the mycobacterial and infectious diseases research group (Health Faculty, Universidad Nacional de Colombia).
To study my PhD, I moved to Professor Johnjoe McFadden lab at University of Surrey, funded by Colciencias. During my PhD I investigated a small subpopulation of mycobacterial cells able to survive the antibiotic treatment without genetically acquired resistance named “persisters”.
My experimental approach included the examination of mycobacterial cells at single-cell level, using microfluidics and the identification of genes that affect the persisters frequency in M. tuberculosis by Tn-seq.
I joined Iain Macaulay's lab at EI to participate in a challenging project aimed at investigating single-bacterial cell genomics and transcriptomics.
