Week 2

One thing that I think is cool about the brain is that it’s the only organ that studies itself.  The brain operates through a series of complex networks composed of neurons.  The neurons transmit signals by sending electrical impulses to...

This summer, Shibani and I are working in the lab of Dr. Nina Tang Sherwood studying the spastin gene, which plays a role in microtubule severing. With a long history that began in 2004 when Dr. Sherwood’s lab identified the...

My research project is working with a HaloTags ligand and a variety of HaloTags receptors. What are HaloTags? The HaloTags ligand is customizable and but there are a few consistent features a base, a long flexible linker, and a halogen head...

The possibilities in neuroscience research and neural engineering are endless, as there is still so much about the brain that we do not know. Tools can be created to help make amazing discoveries about the brain. For example, the Tadross...

Chimpanzees share almost 99% of our DNA, yet the way our brain functions, our morphology, our phylogeny, our phenotype, and multiple other factors differ greatly. So how can this be the case? The drivers for these differences lay within the...

In 2004, Dr. Nina Sherwood and her lab discovered the spastin gene in Drosophila in a gain-of-function screen. Spastin was found to diminish microtubules in the Drosophila larval neuromuscular junction (AKA, a synapse) when overexpressed, consistent with the fact that...

We all know the basics about RNA and DNA. However, did you know that out of all the RNA that gets transcribed, only 1.5% gets translated into proteins? These types of RNA are referred to as non-coding RNA, or ncRNA....

This summer I will be investigating Rad6’s role in the fermentation and cellular respiration metabolism of yeast. Now, you may be wondering how this is relevant, why this is interesting, or why you should care. Let me give you some...

This summer I will be working in Rausher Labs. Much of their research deals with different evolutionary biology concepts, and their main focus is plants. My project specifically is looking at species boundaries, which I am just now starting to...

The last time I had to come up with a mechanism, it was on a (very tough) organic chemistry exam that I didn't do very well on. Yet, whether it's quantum mechanics or enzyme kinetics, asking how something works is...

This summer I'll be looking at the degree to which social behavior is heritable in the Amboseli populations of baboons, including the age at first groom and age at first agonism of maturing baboons. Because age at first groom is...

I'm sure the last thing anyone wants to read about right now is more immunology. A lot of people (myself included) have thought something like this at least once in the past few months: "If I hear the word 'antibody'...

Have you ever tried to get a group to work together? If so, how many were you trying to reconcile? With that image in your head, imagine trying to do that with hundreds or even thousands of people. Now, make...