University of Missouri-Columbia
Bond Life Sciences Center

While at the University of Missouri, I spent my sophomore and junior years as an undergraduate researcher.

During my sophomore year I worked with Change Tan, PhD. Professor Tan studies the generation of conditional mutations in Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) by utilizing temperature sensitive intein alleles. An intein is the portion of a protein which, while built into the protein upon translation, is eventually excised before the protein reaches its final form. A temperature sensitive intein is an intein which is excised within a certain temperature range and not excised within a different temperature range, thus causing the protein to be non-functional.

By inserting a temperature sensitive intein allele into a gene of interest, you can conditionally “knock-out” this gene depending on the temperature at which you store your organism. This is a technique which is potentially very valuable in gene knockout studies.

During my junior year I worked in the lab of Professor Andrew McClellan. Dr. McClellan studies neuronal regeneration following spinal cord injury in the lamprey and locomotive networks in the lamprey brain.

For more information on the studies of these two professors, see the following:

Change Tan-
http://biology.missouri.edu/people/?person=62

Andrew McClellan-
http://www.biosci.missouri.edu/mcclellan/