Olena-Maria Balta

Research Interests

My pronouns are she/her


I am driven to harness latest genetic and genomics technologies to dissect the cellular and molecular underpinnings of regeneration.

As a model organism, I’m focusing on the freshwater flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea. I aim to develop and benchmark a hybrid single-cell transcriptomics pipeline (combining SPLIT-SEQ barcoding with long-read sequencing) to map, at high resolution, how gene networks orchestrate regeneration and cell division. By directly comparing this new SPLIT-SEQ-LRS method against standard protocols, I plan to deliver a more efficient, cost-effective workflow for generating deeply informative, data-rich portraits of individual cells. My attention will be on entire transcripts, where I can investigate post-adenylation and differential transcript usage mechanisms.

I am part of the Oxford Interdisciplinary Bioscience Doctoral Training Partnership and my work is supported by the BBSRC. If you’re interested in collaborating please feel free to get in touch!

Contact Details