Research Interests
Zahra has a strong background in cancer epigenetics and functional genomics. She has generated stable cell lines with histone mutations to study their role in tumorigenesis. She also developed a novel technique, CAS-qPCR — a CRISPR-Cas9 and qPCR-based assay — for the rapid and effective characterization of variants of unknown significance (VUS) to assess their oncogenic potential. In addition, she investigated the switch from histone stem-loop mRNA to polyadenylated mRNA and its implications in cancer progression. Zahra’s research journey spans her undergraduate project, master’s thesis, and one year as a research assistant, reflecting a solid foundation in molecular biology and translational cancer research.
Keywords
CAS-qPCR, Histone Mutations, VUS Characterization, Cancer Epigenetics