This past week I had the pleasure of getting to learn about the research of all of my peers in the BSURF Program. In particular, I found Yilin’s presentation about her research to be very fascinating.
Yilin and the lab she is in studies if a mutation in the scaffolding protein Shank2 is associated with bipolar disorder. She is involved with amplifying the gene of interest from patient samples using PCR for analysis of mutations. She also is perfecting the methodology of running these PCRs. Following this, she will have the samples sequenced and then computationally compare the sequences for similar mutations in an effort to see if such a mutation is associated with Bipolar disorder.
I found Yilin’s work very interesting in that I’ve not encountered much scientific literature on bipolar disorder or its causes; i thought her proposed mechanism of action (the mutated Shank2 protein) was very interesting and am interested to hear what her findings are following the computational analysis. Yilin did an excellent job presenting her research and it sounds as if she has a very exciting project to be involved with!
