Miss Jessica McCormack

Jessica McCormack is a PhD student in the Cell-cell Adhesion Signalling Group, National Heart and Lung Institute.

She graduated in 2007 in BSc Biological Sciences (2.1.) from the University of Warwick, and subsequently worked at GSK as part of the validation team in Quality Assurance.

She was then awarded a 1+3 BBSRC Scholarshipto study at Imperial, with which she completed the MRes in Biomedical Research obtaining a distrinction, prior to her undertaking her PhD in October 2009.

Her main research interests include understanding the regulation of Rho GTPases in cell-cell adhesion, specifically their regulation by GTPase activating proteins (GAPs).

GAPs are able to inactivate various Rho GTPases by enhancing the catalysis of bound GTP to GDP and many also act as signalling molecules in their own right. Thus, these are key players in the complex signalling networks that govern the regulation of the cytoskeleton.

Her research has been focused on the completion of siRNA screen to identify novel GAPs involved in the regulation of cell-cell adhesion in primary human keratinocytes.