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Science Research…summer abstracts for seniors and juniors….
Conor O’Brien (senior)
Conor O’Brien is a seventeen year old senior at Columbia High School. Currently, Conor is mentored by Dr. Susan P. Gilbert, the head of the Department of Biology at RPI. The purpose of Conor’s research completed in the molecular biology lab over the last two summers was to examine the motor protein Kar3Cik1 binding and movement on microtubules in the absence of the Kar3 motor domain. Conor generated a truncated version of Kar3 lacking the motor domain (residues 361-385) with an N-terminal strep-tag by using a cloning strategy involving PCR reaction. Conor then transformed BL21 DE3 RIL cells, a strain of E.coli used specifically for enhanced protein production with the generated Kar3 plasmid and the Cik1 plasmid. Purifying the protein complex was the last step in preparation for the Microtubule Equilibrium Binding experiments that Conor hopes to complete in the future. Conor used the class of motor proteins that move along microtubules known as kinesins. Kinesins are targets for developing new antimitotic cancer therapies. For example, by discovering inhibitors for these kinesins one can cause growth inhibition of human tumor cell lines.
Jeff Knox (senior)
Jeff is a senior in his third and final year with the science research program. For the past three years he has worked in the lab of Dr. Scott Tenenbaum, located in the nanobioscience constellation of the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. Jeff has devoted several hundred hours to his research, which involves protein binding on the nanoscale. Most recently, Jeff spent the summer broadening his capacities as a member of the lab. This involved training in the use of the scanning electron microscope; an advanced tool used to capture images of minute specimens, expanding his knowledge of immunoprecipitation procedure, and effectively communicating experimental results to collaborators working on the west coast. This summer alone his work saw him analyze nearly fifty antibodies in four separate cell lysates to determine their various reactivities, signal strengths, and signal-to-noise ratios.
Kristin Kirby
Angiogenesis is the process of the formation of new blood vessels. In cancer, angiogenesis is an important step in tumor growth because new blood vessels help to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the malignant cells; without these new blood vessels, a tumor cannot grow larger. Angiogenesis can be affected by a variety of factors, including genotype and the presence of growth factors in the extracellular matrix. We investigated how these factors affect angiogenesis by examining the differences in bEnd.3 endothelial cells grown concurrently with epidermal keratinocytes from two different types of inbred mouse strains (B6 and FVB). By observing morphology and proliferation, we hoped to see if differences in these two cell lines could affect angiogenesis. The bEnd.3 grown in culture with FVB keratinocytes displayed more advanced morphology, fitting together like puzzle pieces, as if to begin to form new monolayer vessels. They also presented an increased proliferation, producing, on average, 5 times more endothelial cells than the bEnd.3 grown with B6 keratinocytes. These variations are likely the result of different extracellular matrix proteins produced by the two types of epidermal keratinocytes.
Kara Patrick (senior)
Kara Patrick is a senior at Columbia High School. She is currently working under a Professor in biology, George Makhatadze, at RPI. Kara is working on projects that involve bacterial expression and purification of protein variants. These samples are then studied for thermodynamic stability and kinetics of their folding-unfolding reactions by using spectroscopy. Her work involves both the knowledge of biochemistry and biophysics which she acquires by reading scientific journal articles.
Vineetha Nair (senior)
The research program of the Arbovirus Laboratories focuses on basic and applied field and laboratory studies examining the interaction of mosquito arboviruses, arthropod vectors, and vertebrate hosts, and how this interaction affects transmission intensity and perpetuation of the pathogen. The research program includes studies with alpha- and flavi- viruses, examining intrinsic (genetic) and extrinsic factors affecting vectorial capacity. Her studies are currently focusing on the flavivirus, West Nile virus (WNV), which, like all flaviviruses, is a positive sense, single-stranded RNA virus. Research addresses the molecular epidemiology of this virus over time and space, as well as that of eastern equine. WNV is being studied intensively to clarify the virus-vector interactions and viral molecular biology that led to rapid evolution in North America. Research is underway to reveal mechanisms by which arboviruses overwinter in temperate environments, particularly EEEV in northeastern USA.
Dimitri Dyatlov (junior)
Dimitri Dyatlov is a sixteen-year-old junior at Columbia High School. Over the summer, he focused his research on internet anonymity and detection, specifically problems with the Tor network. The Tor network helps people such as journalists, law enforcement officers, activists, business executives, and bloggers remain anonymous on the Internet. However, Tor is currently inefficient because it requires many calculations to infer the shape of the Internet. Currently, Dimitri is trying to solve this by making a program which will pre-compute the calculations, allowing users to use Tor much more efficiently. One of the issues with this is the need to update the pre-computed calculations. Over the summer, Dimitri has been analyzing the rate of change on the Internet in order to approximate the best update interval.
Christian Multunas
Over the summer Christian worked at the Rensselaer Technology Park with Mrs. Rose Barra from Shenendehowa High School. He worked on the practice robot used in preparation for the FIRST Robotics competition. The main goal was to integrate a webcam onto the robot and to have the robot be able to identify colors using the webcam. He also worked with Mr. Joe Barra on figuring out the autonomous mode for the robot, for which the webcam would be vital. Eventually he hopes to program the robot so it can discern colors and, based on the colors, perform various functions.
Claudette Martin (senior)
This summer Claudette continued her work in Animal-Assisted Therapy. She worked with a high school English teacher from Averill Park High School during the summer school session. Her hypothesis was, If there is a dog in the classroom then; there will be a positive impact on the students level of comfort in the class, attendance, safety, motivation and overall concentration level. She measured this by giving the participants three questionnaires spaced evenly throughout the summer school session. She is currently working on the analysis of this project.
Yelena Tuzikova (senior)
Yelena is currently studying the effects of multiple mutations on the Caenorhabditis elegans. The C.elegans is a microscopic nematode that lives in the wild in compost-like envoirnments and feeds on E.coli. She is researching the C.elegans through the Biotech laboratory in Rensselear Polytechnic Institute under the mentorship of Dr. Fern P. Finger. Over this summer she finalized calculations of the percentage of affected worms by these mutations.
Shawn Herron (senior)
Cell division is a fundamental characteristic and driver of stem cell differentiation and self renewal. Self renewal is widely hypothesized to be controlled dominantly by a series of genes acting in concert with each other, but the evidence for this is conflicting. The factors which control cellular differentiation like gene control are poorly understood and left to speculation. Therefore, an intermediate path of research is to observe the developmental processes of stem cells in culture. In this experiment, we observed the localization and density of the Stau2 protein in E10-E17 mouse neural stem cells, a protein suspected to be involved in the differentiation of Embryonic stem cells, using microscopy and immunohistochemistry.
Andrew Timmis (senior)
Andrew Timmis has had great interest in amphibians for his research topic. For the first part of his research he had gone down to the Susquehanna River in the summer of ‘08 with Sam Quinn and his team to do a population study on the hellbender salamander, which is the largest salamander in the U.S. Now as a senior he had gone back to the Susquehanna with Sam and his team in order to swab local amphibians in search of the chytrid fungus in New York. The chytrid fungus has recently been observed to be the cause of global amphibian decline and has caused many species to become extinct. Andrew is testing to see if amphibians in New York are being affected by the fungus and seeing if the fungus could be the cause of hellbender decline in New York.
Colleen McGrath (senior)
With the assistance of her mentor at Albany Medical Center, Dr. Michael Gallichio, Colleen is currently researching kidney transplantation. Together, they are conducting a study known as Age-Matching in Renal Transplantation. Over the summer, she continued to organize and analyze data from a six year period to attempt to determine if the success rate of a kidney transplant is dependent on the age difference between the donor and recipient. From the study, Colleen and Dr. Gallichio can make several conclusions depending on the results. If the data shows a clear need to limit the age difference between the donor and recipient as much as possible, precautions can be taken accordingly. On the other hand, if the statistics prove to be insignificant, it can either be concluded that age-matching is not a factor in success rates or that the immunosuppression regimen used at Albany Medical Center is outstanding. Colleen currently spends every Wednesday night at Albany Med for several hours, and she and Dr. Gallichio hope to have a publishable paper before the school year ends.
Alex Gabriels (senior)
Alex Gabriels is currently in her senior year at Columbia High School which is her third year in the Science Research Program. After conducting an experiment to study the effects of Aquatic Physical therapy on the times of the Columbia girls cross country team she presented her findings in a powerpoint at the senior symposium in May. Alex was invited to attend the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine at Babson College in Boston. This was a ten Forum in June where she had the opportunity to learn from some of the United States leaders in the medical field. During these ten days Alex visited Harvard Med School and Northeastern Rehabilitation Center. She also viewed a live 90 minute surgery of a full knee replacement. Alex met students from all over the U.S. whom are looking to obtain a profession in the medical field. Over the summer Alex read several journal articles on Aquatic Physical therapy and its effects on the elderly. She plans to take that information and apply it to a designed experiment this year.
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