Dr Poppy Pescod
- Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Vector Biology
Biography
Poppy Pescod completed her BSc Hons in Tropical Disease Biology at the University of Liverpool (associated with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine) in 2014, followed by an MRes studying bacteria infecting tsetse flies. She then moved to the University of Salford for her PhD, where she investigated the microbiomes of tsetse flies and sand flies using both bacterial culture and next-generation sequencing technologies. After completing her PhD, she worked as a Research Technician at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine on the ESSENTIALS project with Professor Philip McCall, before moving on to her first Post-Doctoral Research Associate position in the Functional Genomics Lab with Professor Tony Nolan, studying the dynamics of gene drive transmission in the malaria mosquito, anopheles. Poppy’s second Post-Doctoral Research Associate position was with the Vector Informatics and Genomics Group led by Professor Martin Donnelly, where she investigated gene duplications and their impact on insecticide resistance in anopheles.
Research interests
Poppy is interested in the use of functional genetics and genomics of insect disease vectors, primarily anopheles mosquitoes, and how these techniques can be applied to understanding insecticide resistance and developing novel control strategies. This includes genome modification using CRISPR-Cas9 to make changes to the genome and determine what impact those changes have on the mosquito’s phenotype – from its ability to produce eggs, to its response to insecticides. She is also interested in how insecticide resistance has evolved in the mosquito genome over long time periods as different mosquito species emerged and also over recent years in response to increasing insecticide pressure.
Teaching
Poppy contributes to marking on several MSc modules, supervises MSc and MRes student projects, and ran a one day undergraduate practical laboratory class on insecticide resistance for two cohorts.
Selected research publications
Cryptic population structure and insecticide resistance in Anopheles gambiae from the southern Democratic Republic of Congo – Journal: Scientific Reports – Published: 18th September 2024
Homing gene drives can transfer rapidly between Anopheles gambiae strains with minimal carryover of flanking sequences – Journal: Nature Communications – Published: 10th August 2024
Measuring the impact of genetic heterogeneity and chromosomal inversions on the efficacy of CRISPR-Cas9 gene drives in different strains of Anopheles gambiae – Journal: CRISPR Journal – Published: 13th September 2023
Fungal microbiomes are determined by host phylogeny and exhibit widespread associations with the bacterial microbiome – Journal: Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences – Published: 25th August 2021
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