Miss. S.P.E Jayaweera

Temporary Academic Staff

Department of Chemistry
University of Colombo
Colombo 00300
Sri Lanka

Email: shansajaya100@gmail.com

Academic & Professional Qualifications

  • BSc

    B. Sc in and Biochemistry & Molecular biology (Special)

    Faculty of science, University of Colombo

    Research Interest

    • CRISPR/Cas technology, Cancer biology, Aptamer based diagnosis and therapies, Signal Transduction, Gene therapy, Cell cycle regulation

    Research

    • Final year research project : Effect of CRISPR/Cas9 KO of pfk2 on oxygen consumption rate in human mcf7 cells. This project focuses of employing CRISPR/Cas9 system specifically, to modify a vital gene, PFKFB3 which is encoding for pfk2 enzyme that involved in regulation of glycolysis, cell cycle and apoptosis. Final target is to detect the effect of pfk2 knockout on oxygen consumption rate in mammalian cells, which provides a quantitative indicator of cellular proliferation, growth and survival. In this study, initially specific target site was discovered through bioinformatics tools and for that target, highly specific crRNA and a repair donor template with desired properties for downstream assays, were designed with maximum accuracy and efficacy to achieve KO of pfk2. In this study after transfection of PCR verified CRISPR/Cas9 components into mcf7 cells, SDS gel electrophoresis and western blot was carried out to confirm the target site modification. The ultimate goal was to investigate the propriety of pfk2 as a therapeutic target for breast adenocarcinoma.Supervisors : Prof. R. S. Dassanayake, Dr. Gayathri Silva, Prof. Nilmini Gunawardena