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Mentor: Biswaranjan Pani, PhD; Department of Medicine, Duke University Medical Center PI: Robert Lefkowitz, MD; Department of Medicine, Duke University Medical Center; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Duke University Medical Center GPCRs constitute the largest class of receptors in humans, ultimately serving...

Yaneli Guerra  Mentor: Derek Peters, M.D., Ph.D PI: Yarui Diao Cellular response mediates the production of macrophages as early infiltrates following muscle injury. M1 inflammatory type macrophages react initially, followed by regenerative M2 macrophages which reduce inflammation, breakdown cell debris,...

DNA sequencing involves the replication of an unknown strand with nucleotide-specific fluorescent signaling. A machine learning model associates the quality of each nucleotide read with a score (Phred Q score). Multiple reads for each nucleotide position are then aggregated by...

Mentor: Rachel Keener P.I.: Dennis Ko, M.D., Ph.D. Yersinia pestis is the causative agent of the plague, and many of its destructive effects on the human body are attributed to its ability to evade and target immune cells. Interestingly, despite...

Mentors: Melissa Sican, B.S. and Janice Crawford, Ph.D Dorsal closure plays a salient role in morphogenesis in Drosophila species, and it is characterized by the elongation and movement of epidermal cell sheets to close a dorsal hole. Closure happens during...

Mentor: Dr. Beth Sullivan The centromere of a chromosome is critically important for genomic stability and cell division. However, breaks in the chromosome can lead to dicentric chromosomes, which have two centromeres instead of one. One in 1000 people have...

Mentors: Funmilayo Egunjobi, Milena Jankowska Ph.D. P.I.: Ke Dong Ph.D. Pyrethroid insecticides are synthetic versions of the naturally occurring insecticide pyrethrum, which is found in Chrysanthemum species. They target voltage-gated sodium channels (VGSCs), prolonging the opening and inhibiting the closing...

Mentor: Shaun Sze-Xian Lim Evaluating the behavior of mice is essential to evaluating the effects of various biochemical and physical manipulations and shapes the way for elucidating new drugs and therapies that can potentially translate into the clinical setting.  The...

Mentors: Elizabeth Brooks DVM, Kate Ilich MD PI: Dwight Koeberl MD PhD The trifunctional protein is a mitochondrial protein that plays an important role in fatty acid oxidation. Deficiency of this protein is inherited in an autosomal recessive manner and...

Lauren Sar Mentors: Vanessa Gutierrez, PhD, Stacy Horner, PhD The antiviral innate immune system is a vertebrate’s first line of defense against disease, sensing non-self patterns such as dsRNA and activating a larger immune response mediated by interferon. The two...

Mentors: Evangeline Bao, Soman Abraham, Ph.D., Department of Pathology The burden of disease for urinary tract infections (UTI) has continuously increased over the past three decades, impacting the quality of life for many patients. A UTI occurs when bacteria, such...