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Week 2

June 18, 2019

Empire State of Mice

By: Nithin Ragunathan

The great American philosopher Alicia Keys once declared that “Big lights will inspire you” on a track with Jay-Z.   It’s this sentiment that I’ll be spending my summer trying to extrapolate to my mice. See, my project involves optogenetic...
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The Macro Impact of Microglia

By: Kathleen Beben

To know how something differs when it's broken, it must first be known how it excels when it's fully functional. Autism is a spectrum disorder characterized by deficits in communication and social behavior, most commonly diagnose in boys. While autism...
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Our Brains are like Clay?

By: Jaan Nandwani

We have all had various experiences that have had a significant effect on who we are and how we act. Whether it was the childhood memory we will never forget, or the friendships we formed throughout school, our experiences definitely...
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What Do You Remember About Virtual Reality?

By: Alissa Kong

This summer, I am working in Dr. Gong’s Biomedical Engineering research lab on a project focused on examining place cells in the hippocampus of mice. Place cells play an important role in spatial and episodic memories and the current project...
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Let’s Get V1sual! V1sual!

By: Catherine Yao

When I first sat down with Lindsey Glickfeld, she explained every unknown neurobiology term with a diagram, which I will try to emulate throughout this blog post. I think trying to explain the Glickfeld Lab’s focus on the synaptic organization...
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Curious George Is My Role Model

By: Eleanor Seo

How many moons does Jupiter have? What is a group of frogs called? How many total steps does the Eiffel Tower have? If you know the answers, congrats! If you don’t, take a guess! If you’re curious about the answers,...
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Not Soaring but Definitely Flying

By: Kacia Anderson

All animals use Wnt growth factors for controlling cell fate decisions as the organism develops. The wingless gene (wg) encodes the Drosophila Wnt growth factor, Wingless (Wg) protein. In Drosophila, a loss of function mutation in the wingless gene causes a disruption...
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A Stinging Pain

By: Michael Lee

Cancer pain delivers a message. A vile, biting message to patients that life itself is seeping through their fingers. A disheartening, damning message to medical specialists that even their powers are limited. It thrusts itself as a physical manifestation of...
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The D4 Assay

By: Simone Wall

Modern clinical medicine relies heavily on the blood-based diagnostic tests that measure the amount of protein biomarkers present in circulation to make clinical decisions. In hospital settings, this is most commonly done by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). While accurate and...
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Lord of the Flies

By: Rachel Estrella

When I was placed in the Volkan lab and took a tour back in May I was fascinated, but I had my doubts. What could we possibly learn about human neurobiology by studying Drosophila? Can I get a handle on...
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LRRK2: What are you up to?

By: Shannon Houser

On my very first day my amazing PI, Dr. Sanders, handed me a sheet of paper with three goals for this summer. I was very surprised that I was able to start working on my first goal, learning mammalian cell...
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Facing my fears

By: Caroline Gamard

While many people (not Dr. G) fear snakes or spiders, I have been afraid of antibiotic resistant bacteria since I read a book about it in middle school.  But unlike my other fears, I don’t want to avoid antibiotic resistant...
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