Tota completed her Bachelor’s degree in Athens where she studied Biology. Then, she moved to the Netherlands to join the Master program in Molecular and Cellular Biology in the Institute of Biology, Leiden. There, she worked with Dr. Offringa on the regulation of WAG1-, WAG-1 and AGC3-4 kinases through the relocalization by the BT/PBK complex in Arabidopsis protoplasts. Then, she decided to switch research model and discover the advantages of Danio rerio in basic research by joining Dr. Haramis lab at the IBL. There, she studied the role of autophagy in response to energetic stress in zebrafish and how lkb1, a tumor suppressor and master regulator of metabolic reprogramming is affected when the autophagy process is inactive. At the same time, she generated a CRISPR/Cas9-based ampk1 mutant zebrafish line as a tool to further study autophagy pathway. After that, Tota worked for two years in Dr. Robin’s group at Hubrecht Institute, Utrecht. The focus of her research work was to unravel the cellular mechanisms of the production of hematopoietic stem cells during mouse embryonic development and especially the role of runx1 in the generation of first HSCs in mouse aorta. Later, she located back to sunny Athens and started her PhD in Dr. Beis group in collaboration with Prof. Dedoussis. She is currently working on the role of GWAS-derived candidate genes for CAD in heart development and function, utilizing her favorite animal model, zebrafish. Her life mottos: “Fish your own dreams” and “Shine must go on!”