Semester 4-Week 3

Hello! Welcome back.

As of this blog, I am working on the initial phase of my final project paper. This phase deals with writing the "Material and Methods" section, as well as a brief summary of the outcomes of the various DNA extraction protocols I tested. I have also collected the protocols together into a series of appendices that will be included in the final result.

In between this, I have been doing an intense amount of studying. For some reason, my classes this semester require a lot of self-driven learning and repeated in-class exams. This is a bit of a change from previous semesters, so I have had to adjust my study habits accordingly.

For the science portion of this week's blog, I looked at infection rates for malaria and potential treatments. Malaria infects human erythrocytes when the organism Plasmodium falciparum is transmitted into the bloodstream via the bite of the Anopheles mosquito. While parasitic malaria infection has a wide range of symptoms, and typically presents as chills, fever, sweating, and vomiting, it is potentially fatal, particularly in those with a weakened or underdeveloped immune system. The primary method of death involves the disruption of blood flow to vital organs. According to a 2015 report by the World Health Organization, infection rates have declined by 47% globally since the year 2000, yet severe malarial cases still kill an estimated 584,000 people per year, primarily African children.

Drug-resistant strains of malaria have mutated and proven difficult to treat with conventional methods.  However, according to a study by Nobel laureate Sidney Altman recently reported on in Medical News Today by Catharine Paddock, malaria cases can be treated by disrupting the gene expression of P. falciparum by RNA. Researchers used a tool called a morpholino oligomer to disrupt expression, which resulted in slower development rates of the parasite. The lower development rates delayed the onset of full-blown infection. This new technique is a promising development in the treatment of drug-resistant strains of the infection.

I am including links to a number of articles, and the abstract for the published study. Please enjoy them!

Photo credit: National Geographic. Image: The female Anopheles mosquito is the only mosquito species that carries the malaria parasite P. falciparum.


Centers for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/disease.html
Medical News Today article: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/299207.php
World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs094/en/

Source for the journal publication about gene therapy:

Targeting protein translation, RNA splicing, and degradation by morpholino-based conjugates in Plasmodium falciparum, Aprajita Garg et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1515864112, published online 8 September 2015

Link to the abstract: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/38/11935.abstract

Semester 4-Week 2

Hello! Welcome back.

This week was spent primarily focused on academics, but as of this writing I have also begun my final paper about this project.  This is probably going to take some time to do, as I have to sift through all of my notes from the last three semesters. I haven't always been as organized with my lab notes as I have learned to be, so I am anticipating that some of my data may be incomplete. If so, I will have to repeat portions of my project several times in order to verify the accuracy of the data that I do have.

Live and learn. Good note-keeping=the best possible accuracy.

Also this week, I spent a little time enjoying the following articles about GFP, or Green Fluorescent Protein. This particular protein was discovered in a species of jellyfish, Aequorea victoria, in the late 20th century and subsequently has proven useful for tracking protein production and gene expression in a number of animal species. The protein glows green under light in the blue-ultraviolet range, and while originally sourced from the jellyfish species, this protein was cloned in 1994 and thereafter became commercially available.

Please peruse the links. Also, please take a look at the pics; the animals shown have been altered with GFP.

http://www.conncoll.edu/ccacad/zimmer/GFP-ww/GFP-1.htm
http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/P42212

Photo credits: www.buzzfeed.com

Semester Four, Week 1-Welcome Back!

Hello! Welcome back to my blog!

I am so glad to be back this semester, for my final S-STEM enrollment. I have hit the home stretch of this amazing experience, and shortly after it ends I will be heading off to ASU to complete my degree.

For the rest of this semester, though, I will be focused on compiling my project data into a coherent narrative that presents the work I have done in this program. I will still be setting up experiments, where necessary, to collect additional data, but most of my time this session you will likely find me buried in a notebook or on my laptop.

Feel free, though, to stop by and say hello. And if you are new to S-STEM, don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you have about anything. I'm here to help whenever I can.

See you in the lab!

Photo credit: FLICKR/NIAID

Here, a fractured Vero cell provides a view into a vacuole, which houses a growing cluster of Coxiella burnetii. This form of bacteria can cause Q fever, a bacterial infection that affects the heart, liver, lungs and other organs.