Hey everyone,
I’m Teia and I’m a rising junior
majoring in Computational and Systems Biology. This past year, I spent a couple
of quarters in classes where I got to hear a lot of professors talk about their
projects in computational biology. I’m excited to have finally started work in
Matteo Pellegrini’s lab here at UCLA, which focuses on developing and using
high throughput computational techniques for genome analyses. My project
focuses on the complicated relationship between the immune response and leprosy
infections. The disease is defined by a spectrum, where on one end is lepromatous
leprosy (L-lep), which is progressive and severe, and on the other end is tuberculoid
leprosy (T-lep), which is more controlled. Additionally, L-lep generates a
humoral response, while T-lep results in a cell-mediated response. While
studies have already found more B-cells (in particular, those expressing the
IgM immunoglobulin) present in L-lep versus T-lep lesions, B-cells and T-cells
are diverse, which encourages us to learn about this topic in more detail.
I’ve been able to work with Serghei
Mangul in Eleazar Eskin’s lab, who developed a cool new tool that maps unmapped
reads resulting from other RNA seq analyses. The unmapped reads come from complicated
RNA segments. Among these are those that code for T-cell receptors and B-cell
receptors, which result from the complex processing of the TCR and BCR loci.
The goal is to see if we can find any variants of these proteins in leprosy
lesions in order to learn more about the different immune responses that
correspond with the clinical spectrum of leprosy.
I’ve only been here for about a
week and a half now, but I’ve had a blast learning loads about immunology, the
UNIX operating system, and RNA sequencing techniques. I also have to say that
I’ve been working pretty comfortably, since PPE is nonexistent in this dry-lab
environment. I look forward to a productive summer, and to hearing about all of
your experiences!
Teia
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