Lai Ka Lo

Duties involved conducting field researches on rocky shores and behavioural data analysis, marine aquariums keeping as well as implementing experimental design to study the physiology and behaviour of Littorina and rock oyster, Saccostrea. I also helped in identifying species in the field samples collected from mangroves. The experience confirmed my intrinsic motivation for undertaking research in the field of evolutionary and behavioural ecology.

My daily duties included animal husbandry, laboratory testing on animal specimens, and recording all activities/ findings. I also assisted veterinarians with sick visits and medical treatments – thereby I have experience of performing diagnostic assays and a broad range of fundamental skills handling animals and interacting with their owners. I developed strong interpersonal skills to work with a wide variety of people.

I performed experiments under the supervision of Professor Jerome Hui, looking into juvenile hormones expression and regulation to study evolution history in crustaceans. I assisted in the presentation of the results at a seminar, this summer of hands-on training improved my molecular biological laboratory practices skills – also piqued my interest in this field.

Dissertation title: The Role of Niche Construction for Evolvability in the Red Flour Beetle, Tribolium castaneum

Dissertation: Quantifying the impacts of microplastics on the evolution of antibiotic resistance

Dissertation: Bioinformatic analysis of changes in the genomes in response to manipulation of the level of key epigenetic regulators, UHRF1

Final year project: Hemolysin genes expression of Staphylococcus aureus under different temperature