2023年6月1日
十大菠菜台子’s 眼科研究所 (ERI) recently welcomed eight students — the most since 2013 — into its Summer Undergraduate Program in Eye 研究.
“For the first time since we got out of the pandemic, it feels like we’re running the program at full speed,”医生说。. 肯尼斯在, associate professor of biomedical sciences and ERI faculty member. “When we started getting back to normal last summer, we had four students in the program — this summer we have eight. This is reflective of the fact that we have a lot of research going on at OU. We currently have five faculty members actively running labs and doing research, and that expands our capacity to train more people.”
The eight undergraduate students participating in the 2023 summer program include:
• 摩根的木匠她是生物学专业的大三学生. Carpenter will be working in the lab of Dr. 穆罕默德Al-Shabrawey. Carpenter performs ex vivo studies using retinal explant to test the direct effect of bioactive lipids on retinal glial cells and neurons. She analyzes the changes in retinal morphology and assesses neurotoxic pathways in retinal explants.
• 亚当•施密茨, a freshman majoring in biomedical sciences. Schmitz将在Dr. Dao-Qi张. Night vision loss is a problem for premature infants, but the cause and mechanisms of the problem are still poorly understood. Schmitz’s project aims to determine how rod-driven neural pathways are altered in a mouse model of oxygen-induced retinopathy. AII amacrine cells are the critical neurons in the pathway. Schmitz will assess the loss of aII amacrine cells in oxygen-induced retinopathy. The results will provide insights into the cellular mechanisms of night vision loss in premature infants.
• Charlene胸她是生物化学专业的大三学生. 熊先生将在李博士的实验室工作. Amany陶菲克. She is learning new techniques related to Dr. Tawfik's research, including PCR, tissue culture, animal genotyping. Her project is Homocysteine’s role in age related macular degeneration.
• 奥马尔Elzyat, a junior majoring in health science and pre-health professional studies. Elzyat将在博士的实验室工作. Amany陶菲克. Elzyat is also learning new techniques related to Dr. Tawfik的同型半胱氨酸项目.
• 米歇尔Tcherniak, a junior majoring in biomedical science. Tcherniak will be working in the lab of Dr. 安德鲁·F.X. 戈德堡. Tcherniak is helping to study the Impacts of a prph2 Y285x mutation on localization of ABCA4, an essential detoxifying transporter in the human retina. She will spend her summer learning the fundamental scientific process, as prescribed in the five-fold path to enlightenment. She will learn and practice applying this process to designing, 实现, 分析, 交流她的实验. 特别是, Tcherniak will conduct immunohistochemical analyses on mouse retinas that model human inherited retinal degeneration, to interrogate one potential mechanism of pathophysiology.
• 塞西尔小桥她是生物工程专业的大四学生. 平诺克将在布朗博士的实验室工作. 肯尼斯在. Pinnock is testing development of a cell-based assay system to characterize the dose response of an important receptor for growth of the retinal vasculature, 叫Frizzled-4. 她正在测试诺根, a protein therapeutic based on human Norrin, which is the growth factor that activates Frizzled-4. This is part of the pre-clinical research for Noragen, whose production was developed by Dr. Mitton working with Caeregen Therapeutics.
• 维多利亚Jobczyk, a junior majoring in health science and pre-heath professional studies. Jobczyk将在博士的实验室工作. 肯尼斯在. She is assisting with the testing of Noregen and also will be testing the barrier integrity of Primary Human Retinal Endothelial Cells when treated with Norrin (or Noregen).
• 詹妮弗·佳斯特她是生物化学专业的大三学生. 贾斯特将在布朗博士的实验室工作. Mohamed al - shabrwey和Dr. 科林·吴. She will be expressing and purifying the human (and rat) GPR31 and GPR39 proteins that have epitope tags on either end. She will then measure their relative binding specificities towards 12/15-HETE ligands using isothermal titration calorimetry.
“The students will complete research compliance training for their particular lab’s needs and work on research projects underway in ERI labs,米顿说.
The students will also attend the “ERI Lunch and Learn Summer Vision Science and Medicine” series. The series takes place once a week and various topics are relating to vision science and research are presented by ERI faculty, as well as faculty from the Ophthalmology Department at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.
For more information about the 眼科研究所, visit www.奥克兰.edu/eri.