Marta is a PhD student in the Vertebrate Development and Regeneration (VDR) group at I3S (University of Porto), led by Dr. José Bessa. Her research focuses on the genome-wide identification and functional analysis of cis-regulatory elements in Pancreatic development, function, and disease. For her studies, she utilizes the zebrafish model, flow cytometry, epigenetic assays, genome editing, molecular and cell biology, and bioinformatic tools. Marta holds a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Aveiro, Portugal (2013), and an MSc in Clinical Biochemistry from the same University (2015). She is currently pursuing her PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Porto Institute for the Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar, Portugal. Throughout her research, she has contributed to characterizing the cellular composition of the zebrafish pancreas and identifying disease-relevant transcriptional enhancers active in the zebrafish exocrine pancreas, with human functional equivalents (Nat Commun. 2022 Apr 11;13(1):1945). Her main interests lie in unraveling the 'hidden' regulatory mechanisms behind complex biological processes, particularly organ development and human diseases. Consequently, she has gained significant expertise in techniques such as ATAC-seq, CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing, and Tol2-mediated transgenesis in zebrafish.