Katie is from the United States, and did her undergraduate degree in Biology at Saint Mary’s College of California. While there, she had the opportunity to spend a summer doing independent research on the role of microRNAs on dendritic growth in sympathetic neurons, cementing her interest in research and cell biology. Katie then continued her studies at the University of Edinburgh, where she obtained her MScR in Integrative Neuroscience. During her time in Scotland, Katie completed two research projects under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Theil: The first used cerebral organoids as a model system to study the role of Sonic Hedgehog signalling through the primary cilia in human cortical development; the second used bioinformatic analyses to determine roles of primary cilia in cortical development. These projects led her to pursue her PhD in the Department of Genetics the Radboud University Medical Center, where she will be studying the role of actin dynamics in organizing cilium structure and function.

Abstract
The relationship between actin and the cilium is a complex one. F-actin depolymerization can promote ciliogenesis and cilium elongation, but also results in cilia shortening or deciliation. We discovered that a WASF3-ARP2/3 axis drives ciliary membrane evaginations in photoreceptor sensory cilia, initiating the formation of the stacked, opsin-filled membrane discs that allow phototransduction, but the details of which are not known. Defects in this process leads to inherited retinal degeneration (IRD). This project will use optimized CRISPR/Cas9- based genome editing of isogenic hiPSC lines to tag endogenous retinal ciliopathy-associated proteins suspected to participate in this process (SPATA7/RPGRIP1, INPP5E/TULP3, BBS4/6), with epitopes optimized for STORM superresolution localization (mNeonGreen and mScarlet), live cell proteomics by proximity labelling (TurboID/MS, in collaboration with P7-EKUT), and live cell imaging (mNeonGreen- Lifeact). These procedures will be deployed at different timepoints of differentiation into photoreceptor precursors and organoids to establish the dynamics of the actin assembly process during the first stages of photoreceptor cilium development, and its loss in IRD by evaluating isogenic patient vs control lines.