Meet Euan Joly-Smith

Euan Joly-Smith

I am developing new ways to analyze rRNA data obtained from scRibo-seq, a technique previously developed in the lab.

My name is Euan Joly-Smith, and I am a theoretical physicist now working in the exciting world of single-cell genomics.

I completed my PhD in Physics at the University of Toronto in Canada, advised by Andreas Hilfinger. There, I derived generalized constraints that characterize entire classes of systems modelling biochemical reaction networks in cells. These constraints can be exploited with gene expression reporters to detect causal and dynamic properties of gene regulatory networks from population snapshots of gene expression variability. To put theory to the test, I transitioned to the alluring world of experimental biology, where I engineered synthetic gene circuits in bacteria and used microfluidic devices with time-lapse fluorescence microscopy.

For my postdoc, I am now working on single-cell methods in the lab of Alexander van Oudenaarden at the Hubrecht Institute. Particularly, I am developing new ways to analyze rRNA data obtained from scRibo-seq, a technique previously developed in the lab. In scRibo-seq, exposed RNA is digested to create ribosomal footprints on mRNA which are sequenced and can be used to measure translation in single cells. Interestingly, this process also leads to many rRNA fragments with varying sizes. Our aim is to decipher these rRNA fragment distributions to probe the structure of the ribosome and obtain a quantitative measure of the distribution of ribosomal states in single cells.