Dr Sabrina Sadiq

Hello! I’m Sabrina.

I’m a postdoctoral researcher working on the mysterious and underexplored world of soil RNA viruses.

My interests lie in determining how soil properties shape virome composition and vice versa, identifying the interactions between RNA viruses and the soil-dwelling organisms they infect, and revealing the crucial roles these environmental RNA viruses are likely to play in complex biogeochemical cycles globally. I do this predominantly through analysing metatranscriptomic data sets, generated by collecting soil and sediment samples from unique ecosystems or ecologically significant environments, then sequencing the RNA I extract from these samples. These data are supplemented by measuring the physicochemical properties of the sampled soil, so I can make direct comparisons between ecological metadata and the abundance and diversity of RNA viruses present.

My pipeline includes statistical ecological analyses of alpha and beta diversity and generating phylogenetic trees to give my newly discovered viruses evolutionary context.

If you can’t find me digging in the dirt or trawling through terabytes of sequencing data, I’m usually playing my piano, rockclimbing, or writing my next D&D campaign.