About Esther

Background

I grew up in Northern Virginia and recieved by B.S. in Microbiology from Virginia Tech in 2023. I currently research Salmonella in water, and ask questions like: How does Salmonella get into water? How does Salmonella move through a creek? How long does Salmonella stay in a creek? and What adaptations do different serovars of Salmonella use to survive in water?

I have a particular interest in microbial genomics and transcriptomics. I have done some analysis of RNA-seq data, and some genomic analysis from Whole Genome Sequencing.

In this course I hope to learn about tools for processing large data sets and more bioinformatics skills.

One interesting thing about me is that I am well known for my terrible puns. Alt text

Tn-seq This is a video about the use of Tn-seq in Rhodobacter that does a good job describing how a Tn-seq dataset is generated. I plan on doing something similar soon for my research in Salmonella in order to determine what genes are essential for survival in water.