Dr Felipe Karam Teixeira

Biography

Felipe received his bachelor of science degree in biological sciences and a master of science degree in genetics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He then completed his PhD in Genetics (University of Paris XI) at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris, France), under Dr Vincent Colot's supervision. For his PhD work, which focused on transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, Felipe was awarded the GE & Science Magazine Prize for Young Life Scientists in 2011. After postdoctoral work on germline stem cell biology at the New York University Medical Center/Skirball Institute (USA) with Dr Ruth Lehmann (2011-2017), he joined the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge as a Group Leader in 2017 as a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow. During his career, Felipe has used plant and animal systems to tease apart the fundamental biological problems in the fields of stem cell biology and germline development, epigenetic inheritance, and genome functioning and defence - bringing a broad scientific and technical perspective and that is reflected in the projects conducted in his group.

Research Interests

The scientific interest of our group is centred on the molecular mechanisms controlling and protecting the germline, the ‘immortal’ cell lineage that provides the continuity of life and ensures the transmission of genetic information through generations. Using the Drosophila as a model system, our approach is to couple the myriad of genetic tools that can be developed in flies with high-throughput genomics, molecular genetics, and quantitative imaging analysis to dissect the regulation of gene expression during germ cell development, mostly in vivo. We have two major goals: (1) to investigate the molecular mechanisms governing germline stem cell maintenance and differentiation in vivo; (II) to dissect the mechanisms protecting the germline genome against selfish DNA modules such as transposable elements (TEs).

Research Group Links 

https://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/research-groups/research-groups/karam-teixeira

https://karamteixeira.wixsite.com/website