Tarang Mehta

In my role as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist, I have expertise in both ‘wet lab’ and ‘dry lab’ techniques associated with comparative, regulatory, and functional genomics of various vertebrate and health-related systems. 

In the context of vertebrate evolution, my research focuses on vertebrate regulatory evolution and its contributions to biological diversity. For this, I utilise the remarkable power of arguably one of the most dramatic examples of adaptive speciation, the East African cichlid fish radiations. In this respect, I have been generating and using regulatory data (transcriptome and epigenetic) to identify drivers of tissue-specific regulation and evolution in cichlid fish using systems biology and integrative approaches. In a separate project, I look to study smaller, simpler cichlid systems (instead of the large, complex East African cichlid radiations) to understand the molecular mechanisms driving adaptation to stressful environments. 

In the context of health, I have closely collaborated with members of the UEA Norwich Medical School to apply low-input RNA-Seq chemistry to study leukemia driven transcriptional reprogramming of the bone marrow microenvironment.