Skip to main content
School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences
  1. School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences
  2. People
  3. Postgraduate research students
  4. Profiles

Nicole Forrester

Nicole

PhD Student

Email: nicole.forrester@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

Project Title: Regulation of stem cell differentiation and organismal development by Royal Jelly

Summary: The honey bee genome exemplifies environmentally driven phenotypic plasticity, where nutrition dictates the ability of different phenotypes to arise from a single genome. Metabolic flux acting via epigenetic regulation results in two genetically indistinguishable female organisms, queen and worker, that have contrasting longevity, size and reproductive capabilities. In mammals, pluripotent stem cells are the most primitive cells from which all somatic cell phenotypes originate and our preliminary data demonstrates that one component of Royal Jelly (queen diet) robustly promotes stem cell differentiation. The PhD project will examine the role of this metabolite as an epigenetic modulator of stem cell differentiation and whole organismal development.

Supervisor:

Research

Back to top