Me Ree Chung

Despite the rapid evolution of medicine and technology, half the global population still remains at risk for malaria, a common tropical disease that has been one of the leading causes of death in children. While public health and macro level efforts have been highly successful in attempting to curb the mosquito-borne disease, researchers have been looking into molecular and biological based defenses against malaria. Macrophages are an essential part of the immune system that promote elimination of malaria infected cells, so the immune systems regulation of such macrophages are of […]

Katrina Olson

Proper gene expression relies on the precise communication between promoters and enhancers. It is not well understood how promoters and enhancers work to ensure the expression of the right genes at the right time. I plan to create minimal functional promoters in order to find the smallest unit of the promoter capable of driving gene expression in Ciona intestinalis, a sea squirt. Currently, the promoters used are longer than the core functional promoter and therefore may contain other, unknown information. With a minimal promoter of about 100 base pairs, it […]

Winston Pouse

Dark matter makes up about 23% of the total mass energy in the universe, a significant portion compared to the 5% of ordinary matter (atoms). However, dark matter has yet to be directly detected. Science is thus pushing towards better detectors. Currently Dr. Sadoulets lab is helping develop Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs). These detectors are easier to fabricate and provide uniformity in performance between detectors. I will investigate a few issues or challenges that need to be overcome to develop an effective sensor technology. Firstly, I will resolve a discrepancy […]

Dustin Cox

Antagonistic Pleiotropy, an evolutionary theory of aging, states that traits beneficial early in life are selected for even if they become detrimental later in life. Very few molecular examples of Antagonistic Pleiotropy have been observed, but our lab recently discovered a protein in C. elegans that fits the proposed theory. This protein, KGB-1, protects developing worms from environmental stress, but sensitizes worms in adulthood to the same stresses shortening lifespan; the cause of this switch is unknown. An observed change in gene expression was the result of this age-dependent switch; […]

Meg Perret

More than one third of the 6,300 amphibian species are threatened with extinction, and if all of these species go extinct, the rates of extinction would be 25,000 to 45,000 times the background extinction rate for amphibians. From the view of amphibians, our earth is on the brink of the sixth mass extinctionthe only extinction event to be caused by a single species: Homo sapiens. Amidst this alarming loss in biodiversity, conservation biology has emerged as the authoritative body of knowledge by which we come to understand extinction and what […]

Previn Ganesan

In asthma, contraction of the airway smooth muscle leads to increased work of breathing and respiratory failure. Smooth muscle contraction is regulated by the GTPase RhoA, whose active form inactivates myosin light chain phosphatase. The inactivation of MLC phosphatase then sensitizes smooth muscle to Ca++ within the cytosol and leads to smooth muscle contraction. In preliminary data, we have found that IQGAP1 affects RhoA activity by acting as a scaffold for the recruitment of a known inhibitor of RhoA activityp190A-RhoGAP. This summer, I propose experiments that will further test the […]

Akash Dixit

Dark matter is ubiquitous in this universe yet has not been detected directly. The leading candidate particles for dark matter are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search utilizes measurement of ionization and phonons in order to discriminate between background particles and rare WIMP interactions. Achieving complete charge collection by the ionization readout is challenging due to trapping within the low temperature Germanium and Silicon detectors. The charge transport experiment will provide great insight into the phenomenon of charge trapping and this information will have wide implications […]

Robert Potter

AKT is a serine/threonine kinase that is critical in multiple signal transduction pathways that regulate cell growth, survival, and metabolism. Inhibition of AKT during Mtb infection of resting macrophages results in a decrease in Mtb burden. AKT may play a different role in IFN- activated macrophages, where it is required for full macrophage activation. AKT inhibition of IFN- activated macrophages leads to a decrease in RNS that may be due to changes in cellular metabolism. Aerobic glycolysis describes a cells preference for ATP derived from glycolysis rather than oxidative phosphorylation […]

Richard Hakim

How do our brains create the perception of pain? In order to study this question, researchers need a way of controlling the stimulus while looking at circuits in the brain. Unfortunately, inducing pain in animal models causes tissue damage and immune responses, which makes interpreting responses difficult. My current project seeks to develop a method of controlling the firing patterns of the neurons that sense painful heat. We employ the new and promising technique of optogenetics, which allows us to control the firing patterns of desired neurons using light. I […]

Lisa Du

Cancer is characterized by uncontrolled cell growth, which is in part dependent on mTOR, a serine/threonine kinase that controls protein translation. Although mTOR is almost never mutated in cancer cells , mutations upstream of mTOR can influence the rate at which the cells grow. The Shokat lab has studied the effect of mTOR inhibitors in liver cancer cells, identifying the tumor suppressor kinase LKB1 as a potential modifier of mTOR inhibitor sensitivity. LKB1 has multiple targets with different effects on cancer cell behavior. Through pharmacological and signal transduction analysis, I […]