Bernadeta Rupainyte

Sedgwick Studentship 2025-2028

Bernadeta is a PhD student affiliated with Anglia Ruskin University, the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, and the Wellcome Sanger Institute. She has previously studied biomedical science and has worked in a Cambridge based early stage biotech start up working on developing sustainable materials.

Her PhD focuses on investigating mutational processes in plant somatic cells. Our understanding of somatic mutational processes in plants still remains limited by studies that use outdated sequencing technologies with high error rates that are not well suited to detecting somatic mutations, studies that are limited by small sample sizes, and studies that typically fail to take cell type into account. To address this, the PhD will explore the rates of somatic mutation, its processes, variation and evolution in plants, utilising novel ultra-accurate DNA sequencing techniques in wild populations and a lab-based plant model - Arabidopsis thaliana. In order to do this, she will conduct Arabidopsis plant growth experiments at the Plant Growth Facility and will process the samples using nuclei flow sorting and laser capture microdissection for Nanorate sequencing, enabling precise detection of somatic mutations.

This PhD will evaluate the rate of somatic mutation and the somatic mutational processes active in long- and short-lived plants, comparing different DNA sequencing technologies for their ability to detect somatic mutations in plants, investigating the possible correlation with individual age and environmental effects, and analysing how somatic mutations differ across Arabidopsis thaliana plant layers. This will provide foundational information on the relationship between somatic mutational processes and lifespan and how environmental exposures impact genomic stability in plants.

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