Hi everyone! My name is Mona and I am an MCDB major
biomedical research minor currently working in the lab of Dr. Hilary Coller. My
appointment with the MARC program started this month and it is now week 3 of
the CARE SEM SPUR program here at UCLA and experiments are in full swing. The
whole lab studies quiescence, a non-proliferating stage in the cell cycle where
there’s been noted to cause have decreased metabolic activity. Since a majority
of cells in the body are quiescent, these studies can be applied to a plethora
of illnesses ranging from metabolic diseases such as cancer to chronic wounds.
My project has been focused on studying autophagy, a protein degradation
process required to maintain quiescence. We have discovered that autophagy
deficient mice don’t heal wounds as well as autophagy proficient mice and
speculate this might have something to do with their fibroblasts. In the past
few weeks I have harvested autophagy deficient and proficient mice and
established cell culture lines which I will hopefully soon analyze with
westerns!
FACS computers are not only useful but
really cool looking too. You get to watch color changing glowing action while
it sorts cells using lasers. Unfortunately, we don’t have one in the Coller lab
for me to stare at all day.
Mouse embryonic fibroblasts plate that I will soon be
harvesting!
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