Visiting Master student, Predoctoral Fellow

Karina Paola Martínez Pérez received her B.Sc. in Biology from Universidad del Atlántico (Colombia) in 2019, where she is pursuing her Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences with a research concentration in microbial biotechnology. Karina has extensive experience in molecular biology focused on healthcare, concentrating her efforts on implementing a variety of experimental and in silico tools like qPCR, next-generation sequencing, and cell culture to study SARS-CoV-2, bacterial cells, and other pathogens, as well as the evaluation of small molecules as potential antiviral and antimicrobial agents. Currently, she joined the Indzhykulian laboratory in September of 2022 as a predoctoral fellow to contribute her expertise in molecular and cell biology  to speed up the design and structural characterization of mini-proteins produced for AAV-based therapies to treat Usher syndrome. Specifically, Karina will use a battery of in-silico and X-ray crystallography techniques to characterize the structure of engineered mini-protocadherin-15 proteins we developed to restore the hearing, vision and vestibular function in mice.