Project Title: Two Pronged Approach to Heart Disorders
BASIS Advisor: Dr. Murthy
Internship Location: Stanford University
Onsite Mentor: Dr. Francesca Briganti
Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) causes the pumping chambers of the heart to become enlarged,resulting in reduced pumping efficiency and host of symptoms: chest pain, fatigue, and ultimately heart failure. RBM20 is a protein that regulates the transfer of information encoded in our DNA to the production of proteins necessary for heart cells to contract normally and remain healthy. Consequently, patients with a mutated form of RBM20 exhibit a very severe form of inheritable DCM. In the Mercola Lab at Stanford University, we hope to establish an experimental protocol used to test a variety of therapeutics for RBM20-DCM and to understand exactly how medicines revert the diseased characteristics of a heart cell. We will create tools to identify each of the following characteristics of the RBM20 protein within the cell: where the protein is located relative to the nucleus, when it is produced by the cell, and whether it is fully functional. This project relies heavily on molecular cloning, a process in which I will manipulate circular segments of DNA to study how RBM20 interacts with a sample sequence of DNA. This research will further our knowledge of RBM20-DCM and opens the possibility of discovering an effective therapeutic for DCM patients. Through my presentation and heart health video series, I hope to spread awareness regarding DCM.
My Posts
Week 11: Animations and New Projects
May 05, 2019
Hey there! Welcome back to blog post #11. This week I finished up my presentation and began working on my animated video. It was definitely harder to envision a video and then put it into reality, but I ended up getting it done in the end! I’m also starting a new project in the lab, […]
Week 10: Reflection
Apr 28, 2019
Hello! Can you believe it’s already blog #10?! This week I spent some more time working on different projects that I’ll be involved in during the summer (after SP is over). For this blog, however, I want to talk about my experience working in a lab full time, especially one that’s involved in cell culture. […]
Week 9: Presentation Preparation
Apr 21, 2019
Hey there! Welcome back to Blog #9. This week was a slower week, since I was devoting more time to finishing my presentation and video series. I did run the RT-PCR that I was talking about last week to confirm my reporter works (with molecular biology evidence), and the results have been quite pleasing. I […]
Week 8: Wrapping it up
Apr 14, 2019
Hello! I spent all of this week traveling to visit colleges, which was very exciting! However, I did also spend some time thinking about the next steps in my project. Though my results from last week were very positive, I want to run an RT-PCR on my samples to see the relative amounts of “good […]
Week 7: Good Data!
Apr 07, 2019
Hello! Welcome back to Blog #7! This week was very productive for me, I finished two luciferase assay experiments to prove that my splicing reporter works! First, I tested my splicing reporter in cardiomyocytes. Though I only had enough cells for 2 replicates of each condition, I was able to show that in healthy cardiomyocytes […]
Week 6: It works?!
Mar 31, 2019
Hey there! Welcome to Blog #6 (we’re more than halfway through!) I completed my Luciferase assay from last week, which involved silencing endogenous RBM20 expression in HEK293T cells to test my splicing reporter. Essentially, my experiment showed that in cells with RBM20 expressed, twice as much luciferase was produced when compared to cells where RBM20 […]
Week 5: More Fireflies!
Mar 24, 2019
Hello! Welcome back to Blog #5! This week I solidified my plan for the coming few weeks, which gave me some peace of mind in terms of certainty about what I’m doing next. After doing some online research, I found that my initial assumption with my luciferase assay was wrong. Normally, only cardiomyocytes express RBM20, […]
Week 4: Coding!
Mar 17, 2019
Hey guys! This week I actually spent most of my time away from the lab bench doing two things: Learning R Planning my video series R is a programming language makes it easy to analyze large amounts of data and visualize them in detailed plots. I’ve enrolled in the Statistical Analysis for the Life Sciences […]
Week 3: An Interesting One
Mar 10, 2019
Hi there, welcome back to Blog #3! This week was a very interesting week, to say the least. The luciferase assay that I briefly outlined last week did not turn out as expected — at all. Before we go into that, let me summarize what I tried to accomplish. As I mentioned last week, transfection […]
Week 2: Heart Cells and Fireflies!
Mar 03, 2019
Hello and welcome back! When researchers want to discover or design a drug that treats a certain disease, they also want to know why that drug is effective and how it affects the cell. To make sure that our experimental protocol gives us this information as we try to find treatments for RBM20 induced DCM, […]
Week 1: Introduction
Feb 18, 2019
Hello and welcome to my Senior Project Blog! My project is titled “Two-Pronged Approach to Heart Disorders.” For my senior project, I will be studying dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) in the Mercola Lab at Stanford. Dilated cardiomyopathy causes the heart’s pumping chambers to become baggy, resulting in reduced efficiency and a variety of symptoms ranging from […]