Dr. Breanne Sparta is a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA, in the lab of Professor Eric Deeds. Breanne’s research centers questions about the structure of gene expression variation in multicellular organisms. Breanne completed her B.S. in Biochemistry at Northeastern University and her Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis, where she studied the coordination of growth and metabolism in single, living cells.
I was born and raised in a small province in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. I attended public school and community college before transferring to San Francisco State University to complete my bachelor’s degrees in Liberal Studies and Biology. I, then, completed my master’s degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology at SF State before starting my PhD at UC Irvine. At UCI, I worked in Dr. Todd Holmes’ lab to develop a bioluminescence imaging tool tracking circadian protein expression at the single-cell level in fly brains. Additionally, I found that changes to the timing of light exposure, when sleeping in and staying up late during weekends, disrupt the circadian clock, causing deficits in sleep, learning, and memory. Under the supervision of Dr. Jeff Donlea, my post-doctoral work aims to study how evolutionary adaptations to extreme environments shape the physiology, behavior, and neural architectures that govern sleep and circadian rhythms in flies. I aspire to uplift the next generation of scientists that follow my footsteps, and to utilize my platform to provide opportunities, and a safe, equitable space for all, especially to those in underrepresented and disadvantaged groups.