Farley Kwok Van Der Giezen

I completed my Bachelor of Science majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology and genetics in 2015 at UWA. After a year travelling abroad and working in the WA health department, I enrolled in a Master of Biotechnology course and started a project with Professor Ian Small. 

My PhD project is centred around the phenomenon of uridine to cytidine (U-to-C) conversion in plant chloroplast and mitochondria. This has been known as 'reverse' editing because it is a conversion in the opposite direction to typical plant RNA editing events - cytidine to uridine (C-to-U) conversion. However, the term 'reverse' is not quite accurate. U-to-C conversion is likely a novel biochemical mechanism which is exclusive to small set of plants.

My project aims to discover the enzymes responsible for U-to-C editing and further, to elucidate the mechanism. An understanding of how U-to-C editing occurs in plants may be broadly applicable to agricultural biotechnology, synthetic biology and RNA editing therapies.

I am funded by the Australian Government Research Training Program scholarship. 

I am passionate about sharing my knowledge and skills and have helped to demonstrate the laboratory components of several genetics and biochemistry units at UWA on a casual basis during my studies. 

I have also volunteered to help develop learning resources for high school students to visualise the cell and develop a stronger foundational understanding of genetics.

I have volunteered for BioBarcode Australia and DNAZoo Australia to run day sessions for high school students.  

People learn in many different ways. This is evident when teaching in a wet lab environment. Some students understand experiments based on the lectures and tutorials, but others need to physically do experiments to gain a deeper understanding.

I try to engage students I work with individually personally and try to help them understand and comprehend what they've learned in their lectures, and to apply it to the lab experiments.