Mrs Michaela Bruntraeger

Senior Research Assistant

Senior Research Assistant and PhD Student interested in DNA repair pathways involved in CRISPR/Cas technology. 

I am a Senior Research Assistant in the Gene Editing Team (T302) and a PhD student in the Cellular R&D Team (T233). I received my B.Sc. in Biomedical Science from Warwick University and my M.Sc. in Regenerative Medicine from Queen Mary University of London. Wanting to expand my knowledge of the stem cell and gene editing fields, I joined the Sanger Institute in 2016 as an Advanced Research Assistant in the Bespoke Gene Editing group of Dr. Andrew Bassett. In 2019, I joined the Gene Editing group as a Senior Research Assistant where I currently use CRISPR/Cas9 technology to generate targeted cell lines (SNP, KO, and endogenous-tagged proteins). In particular, I have a keen interest in developing alternative protein variants – focused on developing our ‘in-house’ gene editing ‘tool-box’. Allied to this, I lead a programme of research which has improved the efficiency of bespoke mutant cell line generation by pharmacological and environmental manipulation of DNA repair pathways. This work was the inspiration behind the PhD project I started in 2020, which focusses on understanding the DNA repair pathways utilised by cells upon targeted DNA damage.