Leo Steinmetz

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is ancient light radiation emitted during initial expansion of the universe. Theorists believe that gravity waves (like light waves, but related to gravity rather than to electricity) bounced around in the early universe and left measurable imprints on the CMB. Searching the CMB for these imprints can be done with a technique called bolometry, which works by measuring the heat that photons transfer to a superconducting wire. Because radiation background noise from instruments drops at low temperatures, colder bolometry equipment gives more precise results. Our […]

Michelle Zhang

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays an important part in purposeful, goal-directed behavior through the representation and maintenance of internal goals. In particular, the PFC has been implicated in post-error correction, an important aspect of adaptive cognitive control whereby animals perform better immediately after punishment than after reward. However, the contributions of the PFC to this phenomenon on a trial-by-trial basis are still unclear. Our hypotheses are that the PFC affects overall performance because of its contribution to stimulus-based decision-making and that outcome responses in the PFC underlie the phenomenon of […]

Lucy Li

Cataracts, which are a clouding of the lens in the eye, affect nearly 22 million Americans age 40 and older, and are the leading cause of blindness worldwide. By the age of 80, more than half of the American population will have had cataracts or cataract surgery. To maintain lens transparency, connexin protein subunits are crucial in forming intercellular gap junction channels for the transportation of metabolites, ions, and secondary messengers. Previous studies have shown that knocking out connexin in the 129SvJae mouse strain results in dense cataracts, while disrupting […]

Chris Lin

Bacterial survival depends on the cells ability to adapt to diverse environmental pressures. Many of these adaptive pathways involve small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs) that bind to the 5 untranslated region of their target messenger RNAs (mRNAs). Depending on the sRNA, the interaction between sRNA and mRNA either silences or activates mRNA translation. Although sRNAs are important regulators of gene expression, their signaling properties and regulatory mechanisms remain unclear. Identifying the localization of sRNAs, their target mRNAs, and their site of interaction is key to gaining new insights into bacterial gene […]

Annie Yau

Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) is a condition of glucose intolerance onset during pregnancy, and is associated with increased risk of complications during pregnancy and increased likelihood of bearing overweight infants. Worldwide GDM affects approximately 4% of women, and studies suggest that GDM may be more common in Indian women. Early screening and treatment of women with mild GDM has been shown to reduce the likelihood of complications during pregnancy and prevent the onset of type-2 diabetes. Given the growing public health concern of GDM and type 2 diabetes in India, […]

Nicholas Lue

FlK is an enzyme found in the soil bacterium Streptomyces cattleya, in which it confers resistance to the toxic metabolite fluoroacetate by breaking down its activated form, fluoroacetyl-CoA. Interestingly, FlK has evolved to discriminate between fluoroacetyl-CoA and its nonfluorinated analogue, the metabolically crucial acetyl-CoA, displaying a million-fold higher catalytic efficiency for the former. Although previous work has elucidated some of the mechanisms of fluorine specificity in FlK, the role of the arginine residue at site 120 (Arg120) has not yet been explored. Recent research suggests that Arg120s positively charged side […]

William Tokumaru

One of the most promising ways to create a universal quantum computer is using trapped ions. We confine ions in electromagnetic fields and store quantum information in them by addressing their internal and motional states with lasers. However, electric field noise emanating from the surface causes anomalous heating in these ions, creating noise which impedes quantum processing. One possible source of this is hydrocarbon contamination on the surface. My research will focus on identifying and characterizing the molecular structure of the contamination by probing its molecular bonds using a Fourier […]

Lynn Ly

Gene duplication is a driving force in evolution – the genetic redundancy created by a gene duplication event can enable one gene copy to rapidly accumulate mutations and take on new functions, while the other copy performs the original function. Previous studies suggest that large-scale genome duplication closely preceded major evolutionary events such as the divergence of vertebrates, but the exact occurrences and evolutionary consequences of gene duplication have yet to be fully understood. The model moss Physcomitrella patens contains three homologs of the gene EMF2, which appear to have […]

Joseph Tang

There is a growing need for the development of a clean, sustainable energy supply from renewable sources. Among the many options currently under investigation, a promising route involves the conversion of plant-based biomass into biofuels. In order for this process to be viable at an industrial scale, one of the steps that must be optimized is the conversion of biomass-derived chemicals into products that can be used as additives to existing fuels such as gasoline or diesel. In particular, the optimization of the hydrodeoxygenation of intermediate platform molecules is crucial […]

Wesley Marin

The amount of genomic information being gathered in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (NCBI SRA) has been increasing exponentially over the past 8 years. Although the volume of genomic data being stored has recently reached the 2000 terabyte mark, methods for analyzing these data have struggled to keep pace, especially in the area of reinterpreting sequence for highly variable genomic regions. My honors thesis work will focus on development of new methods for immunogenetic data analysis, creating interoperable systems based on publicly available data. This summers project involves the integration […]