Martin Mwangi

My name is Martin Mwangi and I have been spending my 2011 summer at the amazing University of Pittsburgh as a part of the HHMI EXROP program. I’ve been enjoying working in the Hatfull lab studying mycobacteriophages under the supervision of Dr. Bekah Dedrick. My project involves analyzing the expression of a putative DNA methylase in several mycobacteriophages(which also putatively encodes an endonuclease in a different frame) in both Mycobacterium smegmatis and E. Coli. I have already learned a couple of news techniques such as cloning.

The lab I am working is considerably larger than at my home institution which has been great as there are plenty of people to ask questions. In lab meeting, where I presented this past week, their questions and feedback was very helpful in thinking about how to best approach my project. All the people are very friendly and I had the opportunity of enjoying a potluck at the lab coordinators house this past weekend.

Getting to see the city of Pittsburgh has been pretty amazing. I had the opportunity to see all the amazing fireworks shows across the city of Pittsburgh on the 4th of July. This weekend I hope to go Kayaking. Overall my stay so far has been great and I look forward to what the next 5 weeks have to offer.

Hasta luego UCLA

Greetings from the rooftop study lounge in Rodin [dormitory],




My name is Matt Pimentel and I will be participating in the Summer Undergraduate Internship Program at the University of Pennsylvania (through the Leadership Alliance) this summer.

I left my humble dwelling in the hills of Westwood on Sunday, May 23rd to catch a flight to Philly.

5 hours later, after a flight of conversation with an 84 year old woman, an hour waiting for baggage at baggage claim, and a $10 taxi ride where I sat quietly panicking after realizing I had lost my cash, I arrived to UPenn. I should inform you that my summer program has about 34 students, however, I have arrived 2 weeks early in order to accomodate my need to attend summer school at UCLA while fulfilling the 10 week committment to research at Penn. On top of that, the quarter doesn't officially end for another 3 weeks, so I will be juggling working a full time job and school for a while. Wish me luck!

After a few hours of sleep, I groggily headed over to my lab to begin work. Even though it's only been two days, I can say with confidence, that this is going to be a good summer (especially after Finals are over)! I am working with Dr. Gary Koretzky in the Department of Medicine, and my graduate mentor is a Penn M.D./PhD student named Tao. Tao is a 5th year student, and Dr. Gary Koretzky is a well known PI in immunology, he is particularly interested in T cell signaling pathways, and is the director for the Penn MD/PhD program. As a result, there are about 5 MD/PhD students, 1 postdoc, 2 graduate students, a tech, lab manager, and 3 undergraduate students in my lab.

My first day at work was a long one. I arrived at 10AM and left around 8PM. However, I really enjoyed it. Tao introduced me to so many people around the School of Medicine, showed me what he's working on, and already gave me a paper that I need to read by Wednesday. The lab is really lively, and the Dr. Koretzky is really involved in the lab, on top of all of his administrative duties.

Today (2nd day of work), was a beautiful day, sunny just like most days at UCLA (in contrast to the day I arrived when I was greeted with a warm gust of moist air). Other then enjoying the beautiful weather, I spent 3 hours in a lab safety class, did some reading, and had lunch with the program coordinator. The program coordinator is extremely helpful and has been working tirelessly to make sure I have everything I need.

For most of my time this week I will be taking all of the lab training courses that will be necessary for me to start my project, and hopefully I'll be able to make some time for studying after work.

Penn is a beautfiul school, and I'm really looking to exploring the city and the resources at Penn...after Finals (15 days to go!)

Also, to those that have read this far (kudos to you!), I forgot to bring a camera so my 3.2 megapixel camera on my LG EnV Touch will have to suffice. Additionally, lets hope that the humidity stays far from Philadelphia this summer!

See all of you beautiful people in 10 weeks,
Matt

Matt Pimentel

Matt Pimentel is a third year student majoring in Molecular and Cell Developmental Biology. He is a first year MARC student working collaboratively in a Psychoneuroimmunology lab under Dr. Erica Sloan and in a Molecular & Pharmacology lab under his MARC Preceptor Dr. Lily Wu. Prior to MARC, beginning in fall 2008, he worked in Dr. Steve Cole’s lab under Dr. Sloan investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in promoting breast cancer metastasis as a result of chronic stress. He also participated in PEERS & CARE Fellows and is planning on applying to Ph.D programs in molecular biomedical research. During his first summer as a MARC student he participated in the REU program at the University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute.

Jessica Jimenez:

Jessica Jimenez
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Carlos Portera-Cailliau

Jessica is a third year neuroscience major, and began working in the
laboratory of Dr. Carlos Portera-Cailliau in fall of 2008. She is
currently a first year MARC student and is a past participant of the
PEERS, BISEP, CARE Scholars, and Amgen Scholars Program.
The laboratory currently studies the mechanisms by which cortical
circuits are assembled in the brain during development. The project
Jessica is specifically involved in focuses on Cajal-Retzius (CR)
neurons, which are known to play a crucial role in neuronal migration
through the secretion of reelin. In mice, after cortical layers are
properly assembled, CR neurons gradually disappear for reasons that
are still not clear to date. Still, a fraction of these neurons remain
in Layer 1 into adulthood and continue to extend axons. Therefore,
some CR neurons may have other functions in brain development, perhaps
playing a role in the structural maturation of pyramidal neurons and
their integration into functional cortical circuits. To examine the
fate of CR neurons during postnatal mouse development, a transgenic
Ebf2 mouse line that expresses the green fluorescent protein (GFP)
only in CR neurons can be used. Utilizing two-photon imaging and
electrophysiological techniques, Jessica works to begin characterizing
surviving CR neuron morphological and electrophysiological properties.
If surviving CR neurons do in fact have other functions in the
development of the cortical circuit, a comparison between these
characteristics at early and adult time points will provide insight
needed to begin making inferences about those functions.

Paola's summer research experience at UCSF

Hello fellow marchies,

My name is Paola Castro. I'd like start by saying that my summer experience at UCSF was absolutely amazing.
I was part of the SRTP (Summer Research Training Program) at UCSF. I had the pleasure to work in the laboratory of Dr. Cynthia Kenyon who is part of the biophysics and biochemisty department at UCSF. On the day to day basis, I was delighted to work with Dr. Della David. Della was a great mentor whose enthusiasm for science was contagious. Della focuses her studies in protein aggregation. I had the opportunity to work on two projects using the fabulous Caenorhabditis elegans model. One of the them consisted in studying the interaction between proteins with a propensity to aggregate with age and proteins that aggregate because of the presence of a polyglutamine expansion. In the second project, I studied the role of the proteasome in protein aggregation.
At the end of the program I not only had to present a poster but also give a 12 minute talk about the research done throughout the summer. Giving the talk was a really good experience.

Now on the non-science part of things, San Francisco was amazing. The dorm all us kids in the program were staying at, which belonged to USF, was accross the city from the UCSF campus I did my research. For this reason we had to use public transportation accross the city everyday. I am happy to say that am very comfortable getting around the city.
Thanks for reading,

Paola Castro

Saludos from Santa Barbara

Hi all,

I'm really having a great time doing research at UCSB eventhough the RISE program keeps us really busy with talks, seminars and poster presentantions. I'm doing research with Dr. Craig Hawker and my research consists in making polyelectrolytes hydrogels using triblocks copolymes with anionic ends (middle block is neutral) and homopolymers with cationic chains. Polyelectrolytes copolymers are soluble in water, responsive to the environment, thermodynamically stable, and have important applications in drug delivery and underwater adhesives. So far we have not been able to make a hydrogel but we are very close of doing it.
Since I'm here, I've been driving to L.A. pretty much every weekend to see my lovely family. Eventhough it has been nice to have some time for myself, I miss my two boys and husband a lot!!!. They have come to visit me twice and here are some pictures when they came.

Greetings from Stanford!!!

Hi MARCees!

I'm spending my summer at Stanford University as an Amgen Scholar along with Jason and Jennifer from UCLA. It's been an amazing experience! I love the campus and the bay area ! My peers are really interesting and smart, and we are all big science nerds which is awesome:). We have bonded in this short amount of time and have even organized trips to Yosemite, San Francisco and Santa Cruz amongst other fun activities. I am learning a ton everyday especially in lab. My lab focuses on germ stem cells in male fruit flies.
The Drosophila Melanogaster male germ line provides a great model for understanding the process of spermatogenesis. Gonialblasts originate from male germ stem cells that differentiate once they are asymmetrically displaced from the self-renewing origin, known as the niche. In D. Melanogaster, the testes provide a clear depiction of these morphological changes in sperm along their location in reference to the stem cell niche. Strict genetic and post-transcriptional regulation is imperative in this pathway to ensure that spermatogenesis proceeds in a functional manner. A previous publication attested that a mutation in the overgrown hematopoietic organs-31 (oho31) tumor suppressor caused hyperproliferation of D. Melanogaster spermatogonial cyst, an early stem cell stage. However, we believe that their technique generated a mutation in another regulatory gene along this chromosome. We believe that Mediator 20, a subunit of the Mediator complex, causes spermatocyte arrest and hyperproliferation in itself or from interactions with other factors including but not limited to oho31. It is known that the Mediator complex is a member of the RNA polymerase II machinery, an adaptor between transcription factors, and possibly a target of various regulatory proteins. We are interested in elucidating the correlation between Med20 and hyperproliferation of early germ stem cells in the male germ line. Genetic recombination and RNA interference against Med20 will be utilized to compare testis phenotype in Med20 knockdown flies. Furthermore, in situ hybridization with a complementary Med20 probe will be used to localize expression of this gene in the testis. We predict that Med20 mutants will differ from wildtype testis by having a lower amount of mature spermatids and higher degree of germ stem cells in the early stages of spermatogenesis. Our research will provide valuable insight into the regulation mechanism of male germ stem cell proliferation and differentiation.
I'm very fortunate to do research at a different campus because I now have a greater toolbox of molecular techniques and a different perspective of science. Initially, I thought that developmental biology (Stanford lab) would have no similarities with immunology (UCLA lab)- I was wrong. I soon found out that there are many similarities including similar pathways (JAK-STAT) and protein homologs. I am seriously considering coming to Stanford for my Ph.D. There's a great support for grad. students and many professors doing amazing research. I am very exciting to go back to UCLA too and wish everyone a great summer! GO MARC!!!

Best wishes,

Sergio J. Davila

Fruit Fly testis is a great model for understanding stem cells.

Jason (right) and me (left) along with 20 friends from the program at Ethiopian restaurant!

Whitewater rafting at the Merced river!!!