PI
Pinar Onal, PhD
Pinar graduated from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics in the Middle East Technical University (METU), in 2005. After that she moved to Sabanci University in Istanbul to do her Master’s studies in the laboratory of Dr. Batu Erman on the discovery of plant factors affecting mammalian NF-kB signaling. She did her PhD in the laboratory of Nikolaus Rajewsky at Max Delbrueck Center in Berlin and worked on regeneration using planaria Schmidtea mediterranea. She wrote her thesis on the conservation of pluripotency determinants between mammalian and planarian stem cells. Her interest in evolution and development carried her across the ocean to New York University to work on Drosophila embryogenesis together with Prof. Dr. Steve Small. There, she worked on one of the most famous proteins in the Drosophila and developmental biology field, Bicoid. Together with her colleagues and collaborators in the University of Chicago and Harvard, she investigated the evolutionary history of Bicoid’s anterior functions and structure using in vivo and in vitro techniques. She expanded her work in Shelby Blythe’s lab in Northwestern University to include live imaging and epigenetics. She moved to Bilkent University to start her own lab in September 2022. Her lab uses Drosophila embryogenesis as a model to understand mechanisms that contribute to development of a body plan from a single multipotent cell. They employ in vitro and in vivo genetic and genomic assays as well as live and fixed cell imaging technologies to investigate the interactions between transcription factors and DNA that lead to precise spatio-temporal regulation of morphogenesis in Drosophila embryo.
Graduate Students
Kasım Taha Karagöz, PhD Student
Kasım Taha Karagöz is a PhD student at Önal Lab in Bilkent University, specializing in developmental biology, particularly focusing on the early embryonic development of D. melanogaster. In 2024, he graduated with a BSc. degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Boğaziçi University, where he conducted research under the supervision of Prof. Arzu Çelik, in intellectual disease modeling using orthologous genes in D. melanogaster. His current research focuses on understanding how repressors regulate the expression of Bicoid-target-genes by observing spatial and temporal expression patterns and discovering the morphological consequences of ectopically introduced repressor binding motifs on cis-regulatory-elements.
Berfin Bahar Şener, MSc Student
Berfin Bahar Şener graduated from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2025 with a BSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics. She has research experience in molecular engineering and neuroscience through her work in Dr. Urartu Özgür Şeker’s lab at UNAM, where she studied bispecific antibody production in CHO cells, and in Dr. Sezen Kışlal’s lab, where she contributed to projects on mesolimbic function and fear memory in mouse models. She is currently a researcher in the PÖ Lab, where she studies transcriptional repression during Drosophila melanogaster embryogenesis by engineering modified versions of the hunchback P2 (hbP2) enhancer and analyzing their spatiotemporal effects on gene expression using lacZ reporter constructs. She is particularly drawn to the plasticity of living systems and to questions of how biological coherence is maintained while allowing change, and how perturbing regulatory architectures can reveal the principles governing developmental decisions. For her, science is not only a profession but a way of life: she actively seeks to broaden her knowledge across disciplines to understand the fundamental mechanisms and organizing principles that underlie living systems.
Dilara Temiz, MSc Student
Dilara Temizkan graduated from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Istanbul University in 2025. During her time there, she had the opportunity to participate in a paleoproteomics project led by Prof. Dr. Ercan Arıcan. Currently, as an MSc student in the PÖ Lab at Bilkent University, she is investigating the IDR (Intrinsically Disordered Regions) of the maternally inherited Bicoid protein, focusing on their role in DNA binding, nuclear localization, and transcriptional activation, as well as their developmental effects. Outside of the lab, she is a devoted cat lover and has been practicing Aikido for four years.
Hüseyin Berkan Ortakan, MSc Student
Hüseyin Berkan Ortakan is an MSc student at Önal Lab. He graduated from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2024 with a degree in Biology. His research combines computational biology with developmental and evolutionary genetics to understand how transcriptional networks are regulated during embryogenesis and how they evolve. He is also a science fiction and tabletop roleplaying game enthusiast.
Undergraduate Students
- Demir Erensoy
- Elif Beste Tezcan
- Doruk Sarıcılar
- Shaheen Kabir
- Doğa Kübra Kurumak
- Nigar Ismayilova
- Noran Mansour
Alumni
- Tunahan Çalıkoğlu was an MSc Student.
- Dilan Akdoğan was an MSc Student.