Hi everyone,
It’s Thuy (pronounced “Twee”) Tran here at UCSD for my
summer research program in the Cell and Developmental Biology department. I’m
in Dr. Randy Hampton’s lab looking at generating overactive mutant E3 ligases
involved in ubiquitination in the ubiquitin-proteasome protein degradation pathway.
One of the largest differences between my lab at UCLA (Dr. Steven Clarke’s) and
UCSD’s lab is that everything here is very green- as in everything is recycled
in some way. Pipettes are glass, culture tubes are glass, plastic cuvettes are
reused… and rewashed to be used again. There’s even a trash can that’s
solar-powered here! I believe it’s supposed to send some kind of signal that
shows it needs to be emptied or something like that.
Overall, I am enjoying my experience here. The
weather is beautiful. It’s breezy and cool even when there’s a cloudless sunny
sky above. My faculty mentor is
absolutely one of a kind. I can’t stress how much he’s made my experience here
better. He’s very informal, super enthusiastic about everything, and used to be
a comedian. And he might play the banjo. Anyway, here’re some pictures!
Blog #2
Hi everyone,
Research is going well. My project is actually very well
planned, and I think it’ll be successful – I have hope! So I’ve noticed that there are two types of
people who walk down the halls in science buildings: ones who look at you
and/or smile, and ones who try in every way possible to decipher the
composition of the floor. It’s safe to say that this observation is true at
UCSD too.
One difference between here and UCLA is that the summer
panels seem to be a bit… more informative? I was in the SPUR program at UCLA
last year during the summer, and the panels were great and provided lots of
valuable information about grad school/applying and such, but there’s something
about UCSD that is more personable. One of the biggest ideas here is stressing
that when applying to graduate schools or professional schools, they’re looking
for future colleagues, not students or trainees. The whole evening-out of this
hierarchy is very new to me. We were also able to meet up and have lunch with
the engineering/biomedical sciences faculty. I met Dr. Forbes, who was a mentor
to our Dr. Tama Hasson at UCLA! Everything’s starting to connect together, and
I’m very excited for the upcoming weeks here. Here are some pictures of the
obstacle course we had to climb through as part of the summer program
“bonding.”
Blog #3
Dear MARCees,
Summer’s over halfway done now. I’ve noticed that there are
many rabbits hopping around mowing the lawn here at UCSD. They’re like the
squirrels we have at UCLA, except those are a little more feral.
More about my research, I’m looking at protein degradation
and regulation, specifically the HRD (Hmg-Coa Reductase Degradation) pathway.
I’m generating an overactive mutant of the enzyme (Hrd1 – an E3 ligase) that
catalyzes the addition of multiple copies of ubiquitin to substrate proteins,
which are then recognized and degraded by the proteasome. Things are
progressing as expected, surprisingly. This research is important in
identifying how Hrd1 recognizes what should be marked with ubiquitin for
degradation. It’s also implicated in cystic fibrosis, where a mutant protein is
over-actively degraded by the ubiquitin-proteasome system, leading to an
overproduction of mucus in the lungs and pancreas. This condition is
potentially fatal, and approximately 1 in 29 people in the United States have
this recessive allele. I can visualize my mutant overactive enzyme by looking
for dim GFP colonies of yeast – the enzyme is actively degrading its substrate,
which is linked to a GFP marker. The first picture has dim mutants compared to
the brighter wild type control. I had about 40 plates to analyze.
Outside of lab, the summer program here has bonding events
outside of campus every once in awhile. We went to Mission Bay for moonlight
kayaking! It was pretty frightening because I don’t know how to swim and I
don’t trust life vests. All in all, it was fun; we watched the fireworks at the
bay afterwards. I found I have muscles in my arms that I never knew existed.
Well, they’re so insignificant that all they do is exist. My kayak was the slowest
of them all, but it left time to enjoy the midnight stroll in the bay. Here are
some pictures!
Blog #4
Dear MARCees,
One of the speakers for a workshop in my program told us a
fun joke: “What’s the difference between an introverted engineer and an
extroverted engineer? The introverted engineer looks at their shoes while
they’re talking to you, while the extroverted engineer looks at your shoes while talking to you.”
Anyway, I’ve had the most amazing time at UCSD. Their
biology program is top-notch, and there are so many labs working on protein
degradation research here. I am definitely considering this school for my graduate
studies. Nothing really beats the weather here, and I will definitely miss the
serene atmosphere of La Jolla. However, it’s time to move on back to UCLA and
hit the ground running. If I learned anything from my summer research here,
it’s that there’s really no time to waste and every minute counts – either for
advancement in research or enjoyment in life! I hope you all have had equally
or more amazing experiences during your summer.
See you at the MARC symposium!
Below is a picture of yeast colonies expressing GFP (green
fluorescent protein) that I streaked into some words:
And
these tags are from the summer research conference with my fellow UC LEADS
Bruin:
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