Kyriaki Neophytou

2022-present Postdoctoral Research Associate, Institute of Infection and Immunology Research, The University of Edinburgh

2018-2022 PhD student, Institute of Infection and Immunology Research, The University of Edinburgh

Project: Studying the function of an Argonaute protein secreted from Heligmosomoides bakeri

2017-2018 MSc by Research in Hosts, Pathogens & Global Health (Part of the Wellcome Trust funded 4 year PhD programme Hosts, Pathogens & Global Health), The University of Edinburgh

Projects: The mechanistic basis of tolerating infection; Tracking host and parasite RNA using CLICK chemistry; Characterisation of a trypanosome small RNA

2016-2017 Analytical Molecular Biology industrial placement student, Allergan Biologics Ltd., an affiliate of Allergan plc (now Pharmaron Biologics Ltd), Liverpool

2012-2017 BSc in Biological Sciences with Honours in Molecular Genetics, The University of Edinburgh

Project: Characterisation of a unique bacterial homologue of eukaryotic ubiquitin

Research Interests

I am interested in cross-species communication and particularly in host-parasite interactions. My current research focuses on determining the function of a parasite-derived Argonaute protein and its associated small RNAs.

Publications

Please visit https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4311-9776

Martinez-Ugalde I, Neophytou K, Villagrana-Pacheco Y, Orrego Durañona A, Stevens L, Du X, Bancroft R, Hall JL, Pedersen AB, Blaxter M, Buck AH, Abreu-Goodger C. (2026) Comparative transcriptomics reveals an extracellular worm Argonaute as an ancestral regulator of LTR retrotransposons. Genome Biology and Evolution 8:evag117. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evag117

Neophytou K, Martínez-Ugalde I, Fenton TM, Robertson E, Strachan LJ, Jayaraman V, Harcus Y, Naar CM, Wright D, Price DRG, White R, Evans MJ, Bermúdez-Barrientos JR, Li H, Maizels RM, Aroian RV, Nisbet AJ, Abreu-Goodger C, Buck AH. (2026) An Argonaute protein traffics from nematode to mouse and is a vaccine against parasitic nematodes. EMBO Reports 27:311–340. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44319-025-00620-4

Chow FWN, Koutsovoulos G, Ovando-Vázquez C, Neophytou K, Bermúdez-Barrientos J, Laetsch DR, Robertson E, Kumar S, Claycomb JM, Blaxter M, Abreu-Goodger C and Buck AH (2019) Secretion of an Argonaute protein by a parasitic nematode and the evolution of its siRNA guides. Nucleic Acids Research, 47(7): 3594-3606. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz142