Brandon Tu

Prostate cancer is among the most prevalent forms of cancer in the United States. Recent research studies in both mouse and human prostate tumors have uncovered a heightened dependency on small molecules known as polyamines. Polyamines are crucial signaling molecules for cellular growth and survival, supporting enhanced protein expression, nucleic acid synthesis, and chromatin remodeling. Understanding the factors which regulate polyamine production can provide insights into tumorigenesis and suggest targets for therapeutic benefit. The polyamine producing enzyme adenosyl-methionine decarboxylase 1 (AMD1) is highly upregulated in prostate cancer models. The cellular […]

Aakarsh Vermani

The rate at which DNA mutations occur is highly variable at different positions of the human genome. An accurate characterization of localized mutation rates could enable us to infer evolutionary histories, identify disease-associated genes, and even predict viral evolution, helping prevent pandemics like COVID-19. The heterogeneity of rates across the genome and the myriad of factors affecting them complicate this task, but the recent success of biological language models on related tasks like variant effect prediction signifies they could be a valuable tool for predicting mutation rates. Our preliminary results […]

Bradley Vu

Methane is a significant target in efforts to combat climate change due to its high potency as a greenhouse gas. In the agricultural sector, cattle farming is among the highest contributors to methane emissions. Promisingly, the compound bromoform can inhibit methane production within cattle and reduce intestinal methane levels. Cattle ranchers have applied this process by feeding cows a red seaweed that natively synthesizes bromoform. However, concentrated, industrial seaweed farming can be costly and the practices used can themselves contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, a novel method of bromoform […]

Abby Wang

Microbiome editing is an emerging field that enables the genetic modification of bacteria within complex microbial communities and is a promising approach to tackle many scientific and technological questions in microbiology. The Rubin Lab developed a plasmid-based gene-editing tool (DART), encoding CRISPR-associated transposons (CASTs) capable of making species- and site-specific edits in a bacterial community. While DART can efficiently make targeted edits in model bacteria, the editing efficiency remains low across phylogenetically diverse bacteria, thus limiting the range of targets for community editing. Our current research used a genome-wide mutant […]

Emilie Petit

Endometriosis is a serious disease that affects 1 in every 10 menstruating individuals, causing painful symptoms that can lead to infertility. Despite this pain, 6 out of every 10 patients remain undiagnosed, as the current method of diagnosis is invasive laparoscopic surgery. This project works to directly address this healthcare disparity. Evidence has supported that endometrial cells have different physical and biological properties from healthy cells. Ongoing research from the Sohn Lab has created methods that can analyze cell properties to differentiate healthy and diseased cells. We intend to employ […]

Annelise Prince

Cardiovascular disease is behind 1 in 5 deaths in the US due to muscle cells of the heart, cardiomyocytes, lacking regenerative abilities after injury leading to dysfunction. Understanding the composition of human heart tissue means there is a better model to understand the baseline regenerative potential of the human heart to eventually uncover novel therapeutic strategies to promote the regeneration of cardiomyocytes and decrease heart-related deaths. Inspired by a 2016 Nature paper that used thick histological samples of animal heart tissue, I will develop a procedure to estimate the true […]

Rohan Rattan

The configuration of a plant’s root system is crucial in its inherent ability to access essential nutrients in soil and secure water. Furthermore, tuning root form has long been a goal in plant engineering. Plant synthetic biology now makes it possible to develop tools to reprogram root systems. However, this endeavor faces challenges, including the complexity of designing synthetic genetic programs and the intricate cross-talk between developmental processes. Type-B Response Regulators are a family of transcription factors in the two-component cytokinin signaling system that modulate the expression of genes involved […]

Ryan Read

Subjective perceptions of risk can profoundly influence decision making. Recent work suggests that people perceptually inflate risks learned through experience compared to those learned through description. However, due the difficulty of neurophysiological recordings in humans the neural mechanisms underlying this description-experience gap (DE gap) remain unclear. To address this issue, Ryan will behaviorally explore whether the DE gap exists in non-human primates (NHPs) using behavioral tasks based on previous studies in humans. If NHPs display the same biases and follow a similar learning model it would indicate fundamental similarity in […]

Sonia Roedersheimer

Copper (Cu) homeostasis is essential for all organisms as it plays a role in redox and oxygen chemistry in many cellular processes. Cu content in the cell can be maintained through regulating its uptake, export, and distribution. Chlamydomonas, a single-celled green alga, is used as a reference organism to understand Cu homeostasis in organisms. Previous work led to the discovery of CRR1, a transcription factor, which turns on genes in Cu deficiency. Among its targets, CRR1 regulates the CTR family of assimilatory copper transporters. In low nutritional Cu, the transporter […]

Hong Joo Ryoo

My research operates at the intersection of computer science and Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (LQCD), focusing on quantum computations of real-time three-body correlation functions in 1+1 dimensions. Our primary objective is to determine how quantum computing can effectively simulate three-body interactions that evolve over time within physically realistic quantum states. By implementing the finite-volume formalism, integral equation methods, and other computational techniques, we aim to lay the groundwork for future quantum simulations that operate in real-time and can be extended to higher dimensions beyond 1+1D within the LQCD framework.