July 16, 2023
By: Jaqueline Villanueva Govea (she/her/hers)
Cryptococcus neoformans is a human fungal pathogen that can infect the lungs and later spread to the central nervous system. This disease is most associated with immunosuppressed individuals. C. neoformans is distinctive compared to other fungi because of its ability...
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By: Maia Goel
Caenorhabditis elegans that hatch into an environment without any nutrients are arrested in the first larval stage of development, L1. Larvae can remain in L1 arrest for weeks and resume normal development once they receive food. However, many C. elegans...
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By: Julian Orrego
Gap junctions are intercellular channels made up of hexameric units, connexins in vertebrates or innexins in invertebrates, that allow ions and small molecules to pass between adjacent cells. Although gap junctions are essential to the survival and function of organisms,...
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July 15, 2023
By: Vinicius Xie Fu
Mucosal vaccines are gaining increased attention due to their potential to tackle distinct bodily mucosae and induce immune responses to prevent and treat infectious diseases and autoimmune conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Some benefits over traditional vaccination methods...
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July 14, 2023
By: Jarvis Savage
J Savage, M Ney, A Chilkoti Biomedical Engineering; Duke University; Durham, NC 27708 Elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) have the ability to phase separate in liquid which provides many applications (like protein purification), and with modifications they can have pH dependent properties...
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By: Frank Lin
Ferroptosis is a form of programmed cell death characterized by the accumulation of reactive oxygen species, which lead to lipid peroxidation and membrane rupture. To search for novel ferroptosis inducers and inhibitors, we combined two ferroptosis inducers: erastin and RSL3...
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By: Arielle Kim
Cyanolichens are symbiotic associations between fungi and cyanobacteria. When lichenized fungi reproduce sexually, the fungal spores are dispersed without the cyanobacteria, and they must find a new partner to form a cyanolichen thallus. However, how common these potential cyanobacterial partners...
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July 13, 2023
By: David Su
Chloroplast division of photosynthetic eukaryotes is a highly regulated process with divisionary machinery involving a division ring and other essential components. To gain insights into this process, our lab uses the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which possesses a single chloroplast...
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By: Hannah Baetge
Hannah Baetge Mentors: Mercedes Barzi, PhD, Karl-Dimiter Bissig, MD, PhD Department of Pediatrics | Division of Genetics Rescue of glycogen storage disease Ia in mice by liver-directed therapies Glycogen Storage Disease Ia (GSD Ia) is a rare inherited metabolic disease...
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July 12, 2023
By: Erika Rispoli
This week in BSURF, we were tasked to present our projects in the form of a chalk talk. We had 8 minutes and a whiteboard, and had to communicate the central ideas and questions underlying our projects. Each talk was...
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July 9, 2023
By: Maia Goel
This week, we had the privilege of learning about everyone’s projects through chalk talks: short whiteboard presentations. It was really interesting to learn about the wide variety of projects that BSURF fellows are conducting this summer. One such project was...
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By: Christopher Kang
If you say it "shark tank" enough times, it'll eventually sound like "chalk talk" (source: trust me). This week, we had to give chalk talks about our summer projects to the rest of the BSURF team (kind of like pitches...
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By: Jaqueline Villanueva Govea (she/her/hers)
This past week, we all had the chance to learn more about the different and interesting fields of research our program’s cohort was involved in. Each chalk talk was very insightful, from the different levels of science that they target...
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By: Catherine Pyne
This week of BSURF was special because my peers and I had the opportunity to engage in chalk talks together! These "chalk talks" were 6-8 minute summaries of the projects that we plan to complete over the summer. I was...
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By: Frank Lin
Everyone's chalk talk was amazing and presented interesting research projects so it was hard to only reflect on one of my peer's talks. That being said I was really intrigued by Kennedy's talk and her research. First of all, the...
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By: Julian Orrego
On Friday, I heard a lovely chalk talk given by my dear friend, Riley Reeves, who is currently researching calcium signaling and pattern-triggered immunity in Arabidopsis thaliana, otherwise known as thale cress. Riley's research involves looking at the mechanisms behind...
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By: Kennedy Truitt
One of the chalk talks that stuck out to me the most was Vinicius' work with inflammatory bowel disease vaccines. Not only was the talk extremely informative, it was conveyed with ease and made me understand the complex work that...
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By: Jarvis Savage
Vinicius’ chalk talk this past Wednesday focused on the creation of peptide nanofibers that have the capability to serve as an inoculation for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). His research is focusing on the creation of an intranasal vaccine as opposed...
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