Project Title: Understanding Ikaros in Leukemia
BASIS Advisor: Mr. Barnes
Internship Location: UC San Francisco
Onsite Mentor: Dr. Hilde Schjerven
In young children and adolescents, the cancer that is most often diagnosed is leukemia, the cancer of blood-forming tissues. Research shows there are often multiple factors that contribute to the development of leukemia, including Ikaros, a very important transcription factor that regulates the expression of genes. If Ikaros is mutated, then the regulation of transcribing the “right” genes will be gone and the cell cannot read the correct instructions in the DNA. My project will analyze if Ikaros’s effect on the RNA level translates to the protein level on the cell surface. By studying transcriptional regulation in the Schjerven lab, I can better understand underlying mechanisms that contribute to the growth of leukemia. This is important because proteins play an important role in cell signaling, which can provide a growth advantage to the cancerous cells if given the wrong signal. To test this, I will compare the effect of protein expression in normal Ikaros and Ikaros mutant cells to understand the influence the Ikaros gene has. I hypothesize that most of the genes repressed by Ikaros, when translated will be growth advantage proteins, and only a few being proteins. I hope to contribute to the long-term goal of targeted therapy (targeting specific genes/proteins to stop the growth of cancer) using the results of my project to showcase specific proteins that have been shown to block receptors for cancer growth.
My Posts
Week 12 – the end ?
May 15, 2019
Hi, if you clicked on this blog post you already know that this marks the end of my senior project at school. Working on this project was super fun, but in the time frame I was given it was enough for only partial of the project to be complete. Research projects can go on for […]
week 11 – nearing the end
May 06, 2019
Hello! As we race towards the finish line, I can’t help but feel excited/nervous/happy to present my findings with all of you. In the mean time I’ve been doing some more experiments, working on my slides, and practicing my presentation. Before the final blog post however, I wanted to talk about future directions afterwards! It’s […]
Week 10 – a mindblowing storytime
Apr 29, 2019
I can’t believe there are only two more weeks for my senior project! It feels like only yesterday I was working on understanding how to do labwork in TC (tissue culture room). Time flies when you have fun. Anyways, I am working on the final parts of my project and on my presentation so hopefully […]
Week 9 – i’m running out of material to feed you
Apr 22, 2019
As you can tell from the blog post title, I’ve run into what might have been inevitable: writer’s block. So I did some brainstorming and something that has been on my mind –> aspects of learning in the lab. This idea actually popped up because we finally decided on a summer intern! YAY. She seems […]
Week 8 – same old, same old
Apr 16, 2019
We all know the rule. To have valid conclusions and data, your experiments must be reproducible. I spent most of this week redoing most of the experiments on different samples and analyzing it. Which by the way, I have been able to accumulate a lot of data for! It’s been the same routine: prepping sample, […]
Week 7 – it’s been a blur
Apr 10, 2019
As much as I portray labwork as a fun experience (which it is), it can be extremely brain numbing. This week stood on the more busy side with multiple experiments back to back (flows and westerns) and burning my eyes staring at my data trying to understand it. It’s made feel like me flipping tables […]
Week 6 – yee haw!
Apr 04, 2019
This week was all about venturing into the wild western blots! To quickly go over the basics of western [blotting], I will go over six major steps. There’s actually a lot more steps and little specifics you need to watch out for doing westerns, which makes it so hard to troubleshoot because there are so […]
Week 5 – waiting
Mar 24, 2019
There are a lot of aspects of my research that keep me waiting. Waiting for public transportation, waiting for countless centrifuge spinnings, and ..waiting for antibodies to arrive in the mail. This week what I have been doing has been mostly the last one. It started off researching the different antibodies and their functions to […]
Week 4 – Overanalyzing (a mini-lab report)
Mar 18, 2019
Continuing from my last post, I ended up redoing my case study on FLT3 (a gene that encodes for cell proliferation) due to a slight mishap where the cells didn’t have the Ikaros gene (tumor suppressor) that we had wanted to test it on. After conducting flow, I was able to gather my data and […]
Week 3 – bless this mess
Mar 07, 2019
This week, the task that I was given was to conduct an case study experiment with FLT3, a protein receptor that regulates blood cell formation, to see the effect Ikaros ( transcriptional factor) has on FLT3. Since my project will be similar to this and they have already done research on FLT3 with known expected […]
Week 2 – 7 Things (Not Rings)
Feb 28, 2019
Last week, was a relatively short week because of the long weekend, but I still managed to get some lab work in for the rest of the week. The task my mentor gave me that week was cell counting and growth curves, where I take a portion of my samples and count the cells that […]
week 1 – fortressa grover and its gates!
Feb 20, 2019
Nothing excites me more than coming into lab, and getting ready to dig my hands dirty conducting experiments. The familiar smell of ethanol and tight latex gloves squishing my hands sets the dawn of a new mission: flow cytometry. For my project, this is the technique that I will be using to conduct most of […]