Duke senior Grace Lim isn’t grossed out by the innards of the tiny worm C. elegans. In fact, she finds them beautiful.
As a researcher in the David Sherwood Lab, she peers inside the transparent 1-millimeter creature under a microscope, watching for “cell invasion” — a process that occurs when one type of cell literally bursts into an area occupied by another type of cell.
Grace Lim presenting the results of her research at the AAAS Annual Meeting on Saturday.
Last weekend, the aspiring developmental biologist had the opportunity to take her work to the national stage when she presented at the Student Poster Competition as part of the annual AAAS meeting in Washington, D.C.
“It’s been really exciting,” said Lim. “The researchers here are experts and it is great to learn about their projects. At the same time, I’ve met scientists from all different fields who have asked questions and provided insights that I didn’t expect.”
Cell invasion plays a key role in organism growth and development, Lim said. For example, a fertilized egg will use cell invasion to implant itself into the uterine wall. However, cell invasion can also occur in less desirable processes, like cancer and other diseases.
In her work, Lim created C. elegans mutants that lacked specific genes related to cell invasion. She then observed whether uterine cells in the growing mutants could still invade tissue in the vulva — a key milestone in the growth of the developing larva.
“C. elegans is a good system to study because it is transparent, so you can watch these biological processes happening under a microscope,” she said.
The tiny transparent C. elegans. Photo courtesy of the National Human Genome Research Institute
Her experiments uncovered four new genes that appear to regulate cell invasion in C. elegans. In addition to presenting at the conference, Lim will also be writing up these results as an honors thesis.
Lim, who wants to pursue a graduate degree in biology after finishing up at Duke, says her favorite part of working in the Sherwood lab has been interacting with the graduate students. “We work together to come up with creative ways to solve problems, which is something you don’t always get to do in class,” she said.
And her favorite part of working with C. elegans?
“They have this amazing ability to control their metabolism,” she said. “We grow these worms in petri dishes, and when the plate fills up and they run of out food, they just stop growing. But if you take a few and put them on a new plate they grow again, as if nothing had happened.”
Post by Kara Manke
