Dr. Emma Layton
Oxford University
Oxford, UK
Biography
Dr Layton is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford, where her research focuses on host-microbe communications in gastrointestinal disease. Her current work investigates pathological molecules produced by resident gut bacteria in inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer, integrating immunology, microbiology, and molecular biology approaches across in vitro and in vivo models. Dr Layton obtained a BSc (Hons.) in Microbiology from the University of Manchester, UK, which included a one-year professional research placement at the Genome Institute of Singapore, where she analysed methodological biases in 16S rRNA sequencing pipelines for microbiome profiling. She completed her PhD in Microbiology through a split-site programme between the University of Manchester, UK, and the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore, where she studied host faecal microRNAs and helminth-derived extracellular vesicles during Trichuris muris (mouse whipworm) infection. Her doctoral research contributed to the development of an optimised faecal microRNA sequencing pipeline enabling the non-invasive investigation of intestinal disease, which was published in Nature Communications and highlighted by The Scientist magazine.
Title: Faecal microRNAs and extracellular vesicles as mediators of inter-kingdom communications in the gut
Abstract
This presentation will explore how faecal microRNAs can be employed as non-invasive molecular readouts to generate hypotheses and identify biomarkers in intestinal disease. It will also discuss the role of non-coding RNAs and extracellular vesicles in facilitating communication at the host–microbiome and host–immune interfaces, highlighting their relevance to intestinal disease pathogenesis