Dr Lidia Dykes (née Lasecka)
Throughout her academic education, Lidia developed an interest in infectious diseases and experimental biology, and therefore undertook her PhD studying molecular biology of Nairobi sheep disease virus (NSDV, family Nairoviridae). During her postgraduate studies, Lidia generated antibodies against NSDV and, for the first time, showed how this nairovirus affects chaperones of the endoplasmic reticulum, a phenomenon which may activate pro-inflammatory responses.
After her PhD, Lidia joined a large collaborative project between The Pirbright Institute, University of St Andrews, Leeds, Dundee and Edinburgh, working for research groups supervised by Prof. Terry Jackson, Dr Toby Tuthill and Dr Don King. Integrating molecular techniques with viral genomics and phylogeny, Lidia identified novel Southern African Territories (SAT) genotypes and functional RNA structures of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV).
Now, after a career break to look after her young family, Lidia is taking advantage of her experience in both molecular biology and bioinformatics to investigate RNA structures of viruses of veterinary and medical importance.
Publications
Committees
2024: The Pirbright Strategic Career Development Award
2024: Omics Learning Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Award
2021: The best oral presentation at the VI Global Foot-and-Mouth Disease Research Alliance (GFRA) Scientific Meeting
2014: The Pirbright Institute award “Young Scientist of the Year”
2012: The Pirbright Institute award “The Best Contribution to Public Engagement”
2009: The Institute of Biomedical Science President’s Prize for outstanding achievement in a Biomedical Science (Hons) Degree
Conferences
2024: Offered talk at The Annual Conference of Microbiology Society. Title: “Detection of insertions and deletions (indels) in high-throughput sequencing data of foot-and-mouth disease virus isolates circulating in the field.”
2023: Invited talk at The Global Foot-and-mouth Research Alliance (GFRA) Webinar series. Title: “Use of foot-and-mouth disease virus replicons to understand the biological importance of genome variability observed in nature.”
2021: Offered talk at Global Foot-and-Mouth Disease Research Alliance (GFRA) Scientific Meeting.
Title: “Mutagenesis Mapping of RNA Structures within the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Genome Reveals Functional Elements Localized in the Polymerase (3Dpol)-Encoding Region”.
2016: Offered talk at EU FMDV Meeting. Title: “Full Genome Sequencing Reveals New Southern African Territories Genotypes Bringing Us Closer to Understanding True Variability of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus in Africa.”
2016: Offered talk at Europic Meeting. Title: “Mutagenesis Mapping of RNA Structures within the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Genome Reveals Functional Elements Localized in the Polymerase (3Dpol)-Encoding Region.”
2016: Offered talk at Microbiology Society Annual Conference. Title: “Full Genome Sequencing Reveals New Southern African Territories Genotypes Bringing Us Closer to Understanding True Variability of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus in Africa.”