Maria del Mar Varela V

M. Sc / Evolutionary systems biology

Biography

I’ve always been fascinated by the beauty of living things, which is why I decided to study biology at ICESI University in Cali, Colombia. During my time at university, genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology lectures sparked my interest in the micro processes that lead to life. During my career exploration, I had the opportunity to work as a research student in my university’s Animal Physiology lab, where I worked with Drosophila. On top of that, my bachelor’s research project, a collaboration with Universidad del Valle, tested the effect of culture conditions on the microvasculature of a vascularized composite allotransplant in a porcine biomodel. In summer 2023, I had the amazing opportunity of working as a research intern in LandryLab at Université Laval where I got to work with mutant candidates from deep mutational scanning data to assess the fitness effect of a deleterious candidate mutation when is in single and double copies. I decided to begin my master’s degree in Biochemistry at Université Laval, working with LandryLab, after being inspired by this experience to continue research in molecular evolution and genomics.

Publications