Ivan Tsai

I’m Ivan, a graduate student in the Malkova lab. I’m interested in studying telomeres and alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT). 

ALT occurs in a break-induced replication (BIR)-like manner. During the process of ALT, replication stress and genetic instability at telomeres are elevated by ALT, resulting in many human diseases including 10-15% of cancers. 

We use yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model organism to quantitatively study the role of genetic, environmental, and structural factors in ALT. We are interested in characterizing the structure of chromosome ends throughout the process of ALT using Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT) sequencing.