Bethany Claridge completed her Bachelor of Biomedical Science with First Class Honours at La Trobe University. During her Honours year, she utilised a multi-omics (proteomics, transcriptomics) approach to investigate the role of RNA binding proteins in sorting specific miRNAs into cancer-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs), known as shed microvesicles. This work has clear implications for understanding how specific RNAs are packaged within a type of EV, our understanding of RBPs and their RNA binding partners in EVs, and importantly how RBPs regulate the trafficking and function of EVs. For this project she used a novel RNA-bait capture approach with high-resolution and high-accuracy mass spectrometry to identify candidate trafficking proteins. Across the duration of this research, she also utilised a range of biochemistry/molecular biology techniques including non-adherent organoidal cancer cell culture, ultra-centrifugation, density-based fractionation, and nanoparticle tracking analyses.

In 2019, as a recipient of the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship and the Baker Institute Bright Sparks PhD Top Up Award, Bethany continues on in the Molecular Proteomics laboratory as a PhD student at the Baker Institute through La Trobe University. In order to gain further insight into the molecular mechanisms of heart disease, she is investigating the specific EV mediated communications occurring in the micro-environment of diseased and fibrotic cardiac models.