About
My name is Diego Rivera Gelsinger and I am a biologist with extensive training in:
◈ Microbiology
◈ Microbial ecology
◈ Astrobiology
◈ RNA biology
◈ High throughput sequencing
◈ Bioinformatics
I received my Bachelors of Science in Microbiology with a minor in French at San Francisco State University. I carried out research for three years in the lab of Dr. José de la Torre, where I studied the physiology and metabolism of thermophilic ammonia oxidizing archaea (AOA) from Yellowstone, USA and Yunan, China. I carried out field work at the foot of the Himalaya’s in Southeastern China to investigate these AOA.
I am currently wrapping up my PhD in the lab of Dr. Jocelyne DiRuggiero at the Johns Hopkins University. In my PhD I am researching the increased oxidative stress resistance of halophilic archaea from hyper arid climates (e.g. the Atacama Desert). My research has been carried out in two methodologies: 1. in a single isolated haloarchaea Haloferax volcanii, and 2. in a halophilic microbial community from Halite nodules in the Atacama Desert where we do extensive field work.
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Small RNAs in the archaeon Haloferax volcanii:
• Developed mRNA-seq and small RNA-seq in order to identify that thousands of small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs) are specifically expressed during oxidative stress, suggesting they play a role in the oxidative stress response.
• A subset of these sRNAs have anti-correlated differential expression profiles compared to their putative targets, all of which are transposons, suggesting their role in transposon silencing.
• Developed ribosome profiling in archaea and identified many small RNAs have ribosome association.
• Elucidated the mechanism of an oxidative stress specific intergenic sRNA, SHOxi, which plays a role in redox homestasis and survival.
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Small RNAs in Halite Microbial Communities:
• Developed a pipeline for the discovery of small RNAs using metatranscriptomics (SnapT).
• Collected samples over two years for metatranscriptomic sequencing.
• Identified thousands of sRNAs expressed over both years.
• Temporal and taxonomic specific expression of sRNAs.
• Secondary structure determination and putative target identification of sRNAs using computantional tools.
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Translation in Archaea:
• Developed ribosome profiling and elucidated the translational landscape for the first time in Archaea (H. volcanii).
• Developed a pipeline for meta-gene analysis of microbial (Bacteria & Archaea) ribosome profiling data (mRibo).
• Identified the major ribosome footprint of Archaea relative to Bacteria and Eukarya.
• Linked footprint lengths to initiating and elongating states of the ribosome on leadered transcripts, operons, and on leaderless transcripts.
• Revealed ribosome pausing at specific codons.
• Discovered putative novel initiation sites in intergenic regions and within genes using translation inhibitors.
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Postdoctoral Positions
I am currently applying for postdoctoral positions to continue my career goal of becoming a primary investigator of a laboratory. My interests going forward in the next step of my career are: non-coding RNA biology, cancer biology, and the gut microbiome with specific interest in the gut-brain axis. If you have a postdoc position in one of these areas of research please take a look at my website/CV for my skill set and publications and email me.
Contact me:
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dgelsin1@jhu.edu
- Instragram
- GitHub