Aaron Kamajaya
CtrA is a central regulatory protein controlling cell cycle progression in Caulobacter crescentus. The active phosphorylated form of CtrA directly controls the transcription of at least 95 cell-cycle-regulated genes as well as binding to sites near the origin to prevent initiation of chromosome replication. CtrA consists of receiver domain and DNA binding domain. CtrA activity is regulated by phosphorylation and degradation. My project is to elucidate the degradation mechanism of CtrA. We hypothesized that there are specific amino acid residues on CtrA receiver domain that are essential for its proteolysis. […]
Alexander Parisky
This summer, I will find the precise location of a gene known as rmr4 in the Zea mays genome. This process is known as mapping, and will require me to spend time at the lab bench, in the greenhouse, and on the internet. I will use bioinformatics tools available online to design specialized markers in order to determine the recombination frequencies between known loci and my gene, enabling me to identify exactly where the gene resides. I will employ DNA extraction methods, PCR, and gel electrophoresis in order to gather […]
Lisa Wong
This summer, the aim of my project is to investigate the origin of drug resistance in hospital acquired, multi-drug resistant bacteria. This project challenges the idea that human overuse of antibiotics is dominant in selecting for drug resistance in bacteria, and instead investigates the role of food as the primary source of new drug resistance for bacteria in our body. This is a particularly dangerous and has wide public health implications because of the ability for pathogenic bacteria in hospitals to rapidly acquire new drug resistances. Bacteria can harbor drug […]
Catherine Ngo
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in America. Hundreds of different diseases are characterized as cancer, but all have the same underlying cause. This mortal disease results from mutations in genes responsible for cell division regulation. For my project, I will positionally clone the curly mutation of Xenopus tropicalis, a defect due to alterations in a tumor suppressor gene. This summer my primary goal is to narrow in on the region in which the curly gene resides–the first step of positional cloning. After this initial step, I […]
Joshua Kane
My research fuses the disciplines of genomics and phylogenetics in order to characterize the evolution of large gene arrays. My research focuses on an eighty-one member pre-tRNA gene array located on chromosome one of Arabidopsis thaliana. The array itself is subdivided into twenty-seven triplet gene units, each triplet consisting of a single pre-tRNASer gene and two pre-tRNATyr genes, respectively. Using genomic data, such as syntenic analysis with outgroup species, and phylogenetic reconstruction of the evolutionary history of the genes in the array, my research aims to elucidate the history of […]
Hongsik Park
A detailed mechanism of this so-called “feature detection” has been recently studied in humans; however, this mechanism has not been investigated in any animal model yet (Neri and Heeger 2002). Due to the general belief that rodents have very poor vision, scientists have paid little attention to them on the topic of visual perception. However, studies in the last 10 years have actually shown that the rodent visual systems present properties similar to those of other mammals such as cats and monkeys. Therefore, I believe rodents could be used as […]
Lee Ying
Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome (SLOS) is a genetic disease that causes mental retardation and physical abnormalities. Biochemically, a defect in the enzyme that catalyzes the terminal step of cholesterol synthesis causes cholesterol deficiency and a toxic accumulation of its precursor, 7-dehdyrocholesterol. Gene therapy to supply the missing enzyme has been shown to partially normalize cholesterol metabolism, but more biomarkers need to be established in order to fully explore its usefulness. For my SURF project, I will investigate whether photosensitivity and abnormal bile acid composition, which are symptoms of SLOS in humans, are […]
Di Lu
From reflex to philosophical reflection, the entire spectrum of neural activity relies on the mechanisms of neuron-to-neuron communication, or synaptic transmission. Thus any defects in this process causes catastrophic results in an organism. A mutant of the fruit fly gene Handel, involved in synaptic transmission, was recently isolated in the lab. The mutation causes lethal synaptic transmission disruption. This summer, I will use immunohistochemical staining methods to determine the general aspect of synaptic transmission that is malfunctioning. I will also use deletion, duplication, and recombination mapping to make considerable headway […]
Denny Cha
Ubiquitin is a protein that serves as a molecular tag for either degradation of its targets by the 26S proteasomes or for a wide variety of other functions such as DNA repair, transcription, endocytosis, membrane transport, or protein localization in a proteasome independent manner by covalently attaching to its target proteins. Deubiquitinases (DUBs) are proteins that mediate ubiquitin removal and processing to play regulatory roles in multiple cellular processes. The deubiquitinase (DUB) Usp44 is a critical regulator of cell division that acts as a tumor suppressor by preventing premature anaphase […]
Jung-Eun Shin
Can there be too much of a good thing in biochemical systems? We propose that in a system where one component interacts with two different substrates, there can be too much of the dual substrate-binding component such that the rate of reaction will begin to decrease. To test this hypothesis, we study a model regulation system: small noncoding RNA have been identified that work to tune mRNA expression. Hfq is a protein that aids in formation of a small RNA-mRNA duplex. Hfq is the dual substrate-binding component, and the sRNAs […]