Columba Avila Perez

I am a 2nd year DPhil student and graduate of the MSc in Clinical Embryology. I work at the Oxford Science Park and Dagan Wells is my primary supervisor.

My research interests involve human and murine gamete and embryo culture media, epigenetics, genomic imprinting and chromosome balance.

One of my research projects aims to analyse if varying mouse embryo culture media composition has an impact on the methylation levels of the regions in the genome that control the expression of genomic imprinted genes. The approach is to supplement the media with molecules with important metabolic roles that are present in females’ reproductive tract. The aim is also to identify potential changes on post-mitotic segmental aneuploidies.

I am also collaborating on a project that employs a new methodology designed to analyse in more depth and with greater reliability how different genomic imprinted genes behave in the inner cell mass and trophectoderm of preimplantation human embryos.