Dr. Rhalena Thomas听works in the Early Drug Discovery Unit (EDDU) led by Drs. Edward Fon and Thomas Durcan at the The Neuro.
Rhalena鈥檚 passion for science started when she was a child, growing up in London, Ontario. 鈥淚 always wanted to be a scientist 鈥� I never wanted to be anything else.鈥� Since she was a kid, Rhalena was always asking questions, always wanted to know how things worked. When her parents didn鈥檛 have the answers, they told her it was the job of scientists to figure them out. 鈥淎nd I wanted answers!鈥�
On her path from eager child to accomplished postdoctoral researcher, Rhalena explored various fields of science. During her undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology & Genetics at the University of Guelph, she worked in a microbiology lab on an oral vaccine for cows, spending time on the genetic farm and in their greenhouse, before switching to yeast genetics for her final year project. During her PhD at 91社区, she studied a protein (LGI1) that when mutated causes epilepsy in humans, and discovered that it regulates synapse formation.
She then did a short postdoc in a systems neuroscience lab, doing in vivo electrical physiology and behavioural recordings from fish 鈥� this was where she started doing more computational work, which she enjoyed and is now her main interest. During her PhD, she had become interested in improving image analysis, in using and developing automated techniques 鈥� this computational biology approach, integrating machine learning and automated data analysis, is what she鈥檚 working on now at The Neuro, applying it to Parkinson鈥檚 disease. Although she was already familiar with many of the techniques and practical background for her current project, Parkinson鈥檚 was a new subject area for her 鈥� she found the EDDU group really helpful in this respect, as a very knowledgeable and collaborative team. 鈥淚 love working in this group鈥� 鈥� with the way they work together, 鈥渋t鈥檚 okay not to be an expert in everything鈥�.
Rhalena鈥檚 postdoc project
Her project focuses on 2 genes that are of interest as models for studying early initiation of Parkinson鈥檚 disease. She is characterizing brain organoids (mini cell culture models of the human midbrain) grown at the Early Drug Discovery Unit from Parkin and PINK1 knockout cells (human induced pluripotent stem cells). This will involve various techniques, most notably histology and single cell sequencing 鈥� these data will be analyzed with automated techniques that Rhalena and her students are working on.
Rhalena hopes this work will lead to having her own lab, where her team works on higher level data analysis. Her goal is to fill 2 gaps she sees in how science is currently done: a gap in communication and collaboration between data scientists and biologists, which she鈥檇 like to fill as an initiator, mediator, translator between fields, and a gap in datasets for cell biology 鈥� while there鈥檚 a lot of clinical and genomics data available for researchers to work with, the same kind of data is not available at the cell level. She鈥檚 already working to contribute to this in her postdoc, with the single cell sequencing she鈥檚 working on, and this is where she hopes to work with her own group, working in collaboration with biology labs to create sharable datasets that can be built on by other labs.
What are you working on?
鈥淚鈥檓 checking on a job that I submitted to Compute Canada.鈥� This cluster provides computing resources and infrastructure to process large amounts of data. 鈥淚t鈥檚 for processing bulk RNA sequencing data from my organoids,鈥� to analyze gene expression in the models she鈥檚 working with. 鈥淚t crashed the last 2 times I submitted it, but this one鈥檚 still running so that鈥檚 a good sign!鈥�
Who inspires you?
Rhalena鈥檚 initial inspiration for going into science was her dad 鈥� although he worked as a carpenter himself, he loves science-y things! 鈥淗e likes sci-fi-sounding stuff, nanotechnology, physics,鈥� and he would teach her about different things when she was a kid, explaining how things worked. 鈥淲hen I was sick and didn鈥檛 want to eat, he explained how your immune system worked, how your cells need fuel to make things.鈥� Her parents also bought her a chemistry kit, and books by David Suzuki, and 鈥淢y dad always had a subscription to National Geographic, and would buy me the kids鈥� version.鈥� From these books and activities, she remembers there being a wide range of things, from 鈥榤ake your own ink鈥� to learning about snakes and how lightning works.
Favourite thing to do to take a break from science?
Aside from spending time with her family, Rhalena likes gardening. She says she loves her garden, but laughs 鈥渋t鈥檚 horrible 鈥� it鈥檚 all disorganized, half the plants are dead, and the tomato plant took over.鈥�
Best music to listen to while doing science?
Rhalena listens to podcasts while doing imaging. Right now, she likes Making Sense with Sam Harris and The Portal with Eric Weinstein.
Originally published on the Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives (HBHL) Trainees .
