Becky Carlyle

My research primarily focuses on integration of global measures of RNA (transcriptomics) and protein (mass-spectrometry proteomics) in the post-mortem human brain to understand the molecular changes that leave us susceptible to neurodegeneration and identify biomarkers of disease progression.  My current projects focus on:

1. Sub-cellular proteomics in human post-mortem tissue. I am using biochemical methods to fractionate human post-mortem brain tissue and mass-spectrometry to identify proteins that may change localisation in disease states, including Alzheimer's Disease and schizophrenia.

2. Cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of Alzheimer's Disease. In collaboration with colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Yale-NIDA Neuroproteomics Center, I am using data-independent mass-spectrometry to analyse the cerebrospinal fluid of 400 attendees of a neurology clinic, to identify Alzheimer's Disease specific protein signatures from individuals with varied neurological conditions

3. I co-lead the Oxford GSK Institute of Molecular Medicine Alzheimer's Disease project with Professor Laura Parkkinen. In this multi-disciplinary project we aim to identify cross matrix markers of multiple pathologies in Alzheimer's Disease, and evaluate their contribution to disease progression.

4. In a new BD² Discovery Award led by Professor Paul Harrison, we will dissect the contribution of calcium channel isoforms to bipolar disorder using novel quantitative mass-spectrometry methods.

Biography