Research Interests
Novaira Rizwan is a Ph.D. student developing two novel techniques to investigate the chromatin landscape. The first focuses on elucidating the role of the ubiquitin-like modifier ISG15 at the replication fork using proximity biotinylation (Pub-UBL), under both normal and replication stress conditions, to uncover its interaction partners. The second, CAS-qPCR, is a CRISPR- and qPCR-based method designed to assess the proliferative potential of variants of unknown significance (VUS). Characterizing VUS is crucial, as these genetic alterations often appear in clinical sequencing but lack functional annotation, limiting their use in diagnosis and treatment planning. Together, these approaches aim to deepen our understanding of genome stability and variant function in the context of chromatin biology.
Keywords
Ubiquitin-like Modifiers (UBLs), Replication Fork Dynamics, CRISPR-based Functional Screening, Variants of Unknown Significance (VUS) Characterization.