Research
01
Identifying Genetic Suppressors of the Fatty Acid Synthase Gene (fasn-1) Mutant
Recent studies identified that they fatty acid synthase gene has great potential to be used as a cancer therapeutic agent. This gene is over-expresed in tumor cells, which is regulated by multiple cellular signaling pathways. This research will contribute to a deeper understanding of the regulatory mechanisms governing the fasn-1 and offer insights for potential targets related to the FASN gene.
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Lab Personal Instructor
My lab instructor is Dr. Xiaofei Bai. He is a cellular and molecular biologist. His interest is using the nematode model, C. elegans, to study human genetics and its relation to various diseases. He has taught me many fundamental lab techniques necessary for this experiment.
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Project Responsibilities
I am taking on an independent role in the research project. FIrst, I screened the animals by counting its brood size and embryonic lethality over the course of 3 days. This procedure will repeat for every strain obtained after treating the animals with a chemical mutagen, EMS. After the genetic screening, each strain was sequenced to ensure that the original mutation was stil present. Then, a few candidate strains were chosen to perform genome mapping. Whole genome sequencing was used to find possible candidate suppressor mutations which are currently being validated with RNAi and CRISPR regeneration of the suppressor strains.
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Project Statistics
Institution: University of Florida
Department: Biology
Hours Devoted: 650hrs
