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Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Fellows Blog

BRET and Schizophrenia

By: Ian Levitan

Research Question: To what extent do the D3 and D4 receptors play a role in mediating a response to a schizophrenia drug? What implications would this have for the need for more highly specific drugs in the future? Metabotropic (7-TM...
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Where is PTPRZ1?

By: Justin Savage

My project comes out of the work of my mentor Katie Baldwin. Katie used data collected from the Barres lab at Stanford to compile a list of genes that were highly expressed in astrocytes relative to other cells in the brain....
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It’s about this fungus and its titan form

By: Aaliyah Davy

Cryptococcus neoformans is a cryptic pathogenic yeast that is able to elude macrophages by replicating its chromosome set (among other cellular components) until it's too big to be engulfed. The result are huge polyploidal cells, called titan cells, that are...
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All Things Poop

By: Annika

Our gut microbiomes have long been known to be critical for immunity, nutrient processing, etc. More recently, research has suggested that gut bacteria play an important bidirectional role in brain development & function, and the modulation of stress response. Major...
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Tyrosine Kinases!

By: Kristie Kim

Ever heard of the Philadelphia chromosome? How about imatinib or Gleevec, the highly successful miracle drug most famously used to treat CML (chronic myelogenous leukemia)? If so, you may have heard of my lab’s focus: the Abl family of protein...
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What’s in a Rat Brain Smoothie?

By: Martín Acosta

Even though my summer research project can be summarized as simply running a seemingly endless amount of HPLC samples, such a description would not do service to the lab I’m a part of. What I will do is part of...
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Mice, Injections, Proteins, Oh My!

By: Alie Fink

One of the core approaches my lab uses to model depressive-like symptoms in mouse models is the social defeat paradigm. This paradigm allows my lab to simulate behavioral conditions that lead to the onset of depressive-like symptoms which we can...
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The Dark Side of Light

By: Michael Ong

The Di Giulio Lab focuses on ecotoxicology, the study of contaminants in the environment and their effects on organisms. Most of his work investigates how polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and nanoparticles affect the development of zebrafish and killifish. My project...
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Engineering the Immune System

By: Cassie Ingram

The focus of my lab is developing and characterizing self-assembling, self-adjuvanting nanofibers and other materials to induce certain immune responses to provide another possible platform for vaccine design and other medical applications. I have been paired with Lucas Shores, a...
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Peptides Galore

By: Maddie Ojeda

Autoimmune diseases are very challenging to treat. They lead a person’s body to go into a self-destruction mode, killing many perfectly healthy cells in the process. Furthermore it is often times difficult to pinpoint the reasons for the onset of...
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Insulin Secretion

By: Chumba Koech

The overall theme of my lab concerns looking at the pathways of insulin secretion so that we can better understand type 2 diabetes. One of my post doc focuses for her project involves the relationship between GLP-1 and GIP. In...
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Stress and Reproduction

By: Georgia Young

The research project I am working on in the Alberts Lab examines how drought, and the stress caused by drought, can affect pregnancy and conception in wild baboons. We are specifically studying the wild baboon population in Amboseli National Park...
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Spines: what’s the point of it all?

By: Maddie Go

When you hear the word “spine,” your first thought is probably a backbone: that familiar stack of vertebrae running from the base of your skull to your tailbone. At least, that’s what popped into my head when I first discussed...
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Will they mate?

By: Rebecca Lee

Because of my research project, I've begun to think fruit flies are kind of cute. [caption id="attachment_2373" align="alignnone" width="300"] ok, I admit...they look cuter in person (credit: http://theconversation.com/animals-in-research-drosophila-the-fruit-fly-13571)[/caption] My research project revolves around connecting a particular pathway in the brain to...
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The Game Plan

By: Iris Chang

Anybody who knows me relatively well will know that I am a huge pro-football fan (33 days till Hall of Fame Game Cowboys vs. Cardinals, but who’s counting?) But many fanatics, myself included, often severely overlook the risks that athletes...
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Why do Science?

By: Ulises

The Dr. Gayathri R. Devi lab revolves around translational and clinical applications of cell death signaling. Since this is a very broad topic, it allows Dr. Devi to take multiple avenues to conduct research. Her passion for research started as...
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