Dr Karen R Mifsud

As a Research Fellow within the Neuro-Epigenetic Research Group I am interested in the regulation of signalling, epigenetic and genomic process which occur in the brain following stress. Our group is particularly interested in the function of the hippocampus under baseline conditions, and after stress, in regulating the HPA axis and facilitating adaptive responses towards stress resilience. Personally I am also very interested in understand how the extracellular matrix can influence adaptive learning processes.

In order to pursue these investigations we have developed novel advanced chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) methods to understand protein-DNA interactions including sequential and tandem ChIP (Mifsud & Reul, PNAS, 2016). Other techniques used in our lab include immunohistochemistry, RNA extraction and analysis, quantitative PCR, RNAScope, western blotting, radioimmunoassays and ELISA.