BSURF 2018

Throughout my eight weeks as a BSURFer, we had various faculty members present their research along with their inspiring stories about their journey to a faculty postition. An overall theme in each of their stories was the uncertainty about their...

Throughout the course of the summer we have listened to talks from professionals from all sorts of backgrounds and focuses particularly in the field of science. We were able to here from multiple perspectives as to how these medical doctors,...

Over the course of the program there have been many great talks that have given me a glimpse into various topics of research. Speakers have also shared their own personal journey and wisdom so that it might help younger scientists,...

One of my favorite activities of the BSURF program was the opportunity for all of   my classmates and I, along with Dr. Grunwald and Jason, to gather in the early hours of the day to listen to inspiring scientists...

Having all these seminars this summer has really made me appreciate the huge variety of faculty at Duke and how amazing many of the people here are. The fact that I can contact many of them and have a discussion...

Throughout the past 7 weeks, the research fellows have had the great privilege of listening to some amazing faculty speakers. From Dr. Nowicki investigating bird song to Dr. David collecting fecal matter for microbiome analysis, I have thoroughly enjoyed listening...

In my experience, it’s not often you meet someone who works with poop regularly. So when I learned that Dr. Lawrence David studied the microbiome using human stool samples, I was immediately intrigued. But it wasn’t Dr. David’s research that...

In the past couple of weeks, we have had a lot of amazing, accomplished speakers, all at different points in their careers, come talk to us about life and science. Each talk has been fascinating, with a new life story...

Abnormal and excessive tau phosphorylation commonly characterizes Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology through neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) causing axonal dysfunction and microtubular instability. Essential to DNA repair, protein modification, and gene expression, the methionine cycle generates a methyl group upon the conversion...

A majority of Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy cases are caused by a frameshift mutation in the DMD gene and the deletion of exon 51 with CRISPR-Cas9 can restore the reading frame in many patients. However, there are thousands of gRNA sequences...

Sea urchin embryos show a great affinity to replace cells necessary for normal development through a process called transfating in which cells in the embryo express genes of other cells to compensate for the removal. Specifically, the removal of primary...

Cannabis is one of the most popular drugs consumed in the United States. While work has been done to quantify whole genome transgenerational effects of cannabis exposure, there has been little done to quantify transgenerational effects on a gene-by-gene basis....

How does the ability to do phagocytosis of a new cell population compare to other dendritic cells? The intestines are home to immune system cells whose role is to monitor the microbiota within the gut; one group of these cells...

Dystonia is a neuromuscular disorder in which muscles make involuntary contractions, leading to abnormal and often times repetitive movements. It has been found that a common mechanism for several types of dystonia—each characterized by the gene adversely affected—was an impairment...

So far during my summer of research there have a combinations of highs and lows. Leading up to now, much of my research has been spent in trying to troubleshoot the issues with my project and trying countless different approaches...