Keeping the tradition going: Rebeca Olvera León, on her hopes for MSS 2027

For Rebeca Olvera León, the Mutational Scanning Symposium is becoming something of a habit. This year marked her fourth consecutive MSS, although her first as a PhD student. We caught up with her after the MSS 2027 announcement to get her insights into the most recent meeting and find out what she is excited for in 2027.

Rebeca's work with multiplexed assays of variant effects (MAVEs) began during her master’s degree, where she carried out saturation genome editing (SGE) of RAD51C. She went on to work on the project as a Research Assistant before beginning her PhD, where she's now applying base editing in the context of paralog synthetic lethality.

Reflections on MSS 2026

This year's meeting more than lived up to Rebeca’s expectations. "The programme was excellent and well balanced between technology, innovation, and applications," she says. Presenting her own work added an extra dimension to the experience, with both a flash talk and a poster.

The flash talk, she explains, “was a welcome introduction to presenting for a broader audience. The poster session was also a nice experience, as it was my first time presenting my PhD at a conference, and it made me realise just how much work has been done so far. It also led to some useful discussions and valuable feedback.”

Rebeca’s poster was very well-received, and there was a common theme of questioning from attendees. She says, “many of the questions focused on the methodological aspects of the project, particularly the library design and coverage. There was also interest in the strategy for evaluating paralog pairs in the cell lines I am planning to generate, including gene knockout strategies and potential gene essentiality. I partly anticipated these questions though, since they represent some of the more technically challenging parts of the project.”

MSS 2026 agenda highlights

Two talks stood out as highlights for Rebeca. The first, by Emmylou C. Nicolas-Martinez, explored using CRISPR-based gene activation to study disease-causing variants affecting RNA splicing in genes not typically expressed in accessible tissues. The second, by Andrew Glazer, examined high-throughput functional assays to better understand SCN5A variants and improve arrhythmia risk prediction. "I enjoy seeing these types of presentations where researchers from fields different to mine apply similar technologies to address questions in other diseases," Rebeca says.

The meeting also sparked new ideas. She came away with fresh approaches for generating knockouts in her cell lines. “I also learned about technologies that could potentially be applied in my own research for validation, and plan to research if they are suitable for my system.”

 Looking to the future: MSS 2027

As for MSS 2027, Rebeca is already looking forward to attending MSS 2027 in Seattle and hopes to be able to present results from her PhD project.

She says, “MSS is a very well-organized meeting, with a great balance between talks, workshops and poster sessions. I’d encourage any early career scientist to attend or present, if they can.”