Oye Bosompra Post 2

Hi all,

This summer is flying by so fast! It’s been great spending time in the Coller lab, but I’m sad because this 10 week program is almost over. We’ve been making progress in our lab, and the grad student I’ve been working with wants to publish at the end of this year! We’re studying alternative polyadenylation in the RECK gene and have noted that while the canonical, long isoform decreases cancer cell migration and invasion, a second shorter isoform is highly produced in cancer cell lines and increases migration and invasion. We’ve been trying to analyze this mechanism and the extent of the interactions between the two isoforms – we hypothesize that the short isoform directly binds to and suppresses long RECK’s ability to suppress cancer migration and invasion, but still have more to look into.

I’ve also gotten the chance to spend time with the other students from Santa Monica College doing research here since I’m dorming on the same floor as them in Gardenia. They’re a very energetic bunch and take full advantage of their time at UCLA – they work out at Wooden at 5 a.m., swim at Sunset Rec every night, try different Westwood restaurants, and do all sorts of things I take for granted since I have access to these things year round. I’ve gone off campus to eat with them a few times and am going to Six Flags with them on Sunday, so we’ll see how it goes!

Best,

Oye

                        

                                                  

The smoke in LA last Saturday from the Sand Fire    Hanging out with some of the SMC students!

Mona Charitzeh Blog 2

Hello everyone! Glad to hear everyone in having a blast so far in their respective programs. I cant believe its already week six of the program here at UCLA- where has the time gone?! Passing the half way mark is bitter-sweet because although Oye is now part of the lab, Omar, a visiting undergraduate from Vermont will be leaving soon. For some time, I was the only undergrad in the lab and it was really fun having two other people around.  

 

 

In the past couple of weeks, I was able to harvest the cells from the MEFS and use them for various projects. We looked at effective knockout of ATG7, levels of LC3, and the protein NF-kB which is involved in inflammatory response all by running a western. As you can see below, my first western didn’t look so great (and neither did the million that followed because each time there was a different problem) but eventually I was able to troubleshoot the problems and finally get results.  

 

In the upcoming weeks I will be doing more protein expression assays and also looking at cytokine levels in my ATG7 +/+ and +/- mice due to a report that loss of autophagy leads to increased cytokine levels. I have extracted RNA from the cells and am super excited to be working with Dr. Scumpia’s lab in the department of dermatology to doing real time PCR checking for cytokines.

Hope you are all doing well!

-Mona