Postdoctoral Researcher

Email: pep66@cornell.edu

Paula Petrella grew up in New York and earned her BFA from New York University. After volunteering on three research expeditions in Africa in which she worked on cheetah conservation, invasive agricultural species, and the treatment of intestinal parasites, she obtained her Pre-Medical and Science Certificate from UCLA. Under the supervision of Dr. Vincent Pasque in Kathrin Plath’s lab at UCLA, Paula’s work focused on determining whether the histone chaperone HIRA and the TET family of proteins, which convert 5-methylcytosine to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine, are required for cellular reprogramming and the reactivation of the inactive X-chromosome. She is currently focused on deep profiling of triple-negative breast cancer cell lines as they evolve in response to chemotherapy, with the aim of understanding the underlying mechanisms of chemo-resistance in stem-like cancer cell subpopulations.