Week 10: Walk Down Memory Lane
Akash K -
Hey everyone! I hope you are all well! This is my final blog, so I would like to give a timeline of all I have learned during this project.
The first week was a bit rough because I walked in on my first day and learned that my original plan had been scrapped in the months I was away from the lab. I had come to the same lab the previous summer for a research opportunity, so I had planned this project for a while before beginning. However, with the change of plans, I learned how to make the best of the situation and find an equally interesting project. I started learning about the lymphatic system because it was a different approach than I had taken over the summer. The lymphatic system was the new approach since it was recently found that in the brain, it plays a very important role in taking out waste in the brain, which is considered to be the accepted cause for Alzheimer’s Disease.
The second week was similar to the first week; however, I focused on learning about the brain itself. This was important because I had to learn how different the brain was from the rest of the body. There is a specific portion of the lymphatic system called the glymphatic system. The main difference between these two systems is that the glymphatic system uses glial cells to function.
For the next two weeks, I worked on the glymphatic pathway and the overall process that the system takes from the blood to the brain, tissues, and cells, and then how waste is disposed of.
The next two weeks, I worked on finding interesting proteins that I liked: MYLK, IGF1R, A4, SNTA1, and BACE2. I learned the functions, and then I looked to see whether these were pertinent to Alzheimer’s disease.
In the seventh week, I learned how to analyze proteins for upregulation and downregulation. Up means that the protein is more expressed when harmful amyloid beta proteins are present, while down means that the protein is less expressed when the amyloid beta is present.
In the eighth week, I learned how to perform mass spectrometry experiments and also how to analyze the results. I learned the different types of mass spec and also what the strengths and differences are between them. I then learned how to use many different software programs to plot the data.
In the ninth week, I was working mostly on finding relevant genes that have been linked to Alzheimer’s Disease. I found 6 different genes and then found the many proteins that were related to them. I then isolated MYD88 as my main candidate to study further because it has been linked to increased clearance of amyloid beta. The next steps are to figure out whether MYD88 is a valid candidate. The way I think this can be tested is to analyze cells that have amyloid beta present, and then inject MYD88 in different concentrations. After, we can measure the amount of amyloid beta change to see whether the MYD88 clears amyloid beta.
To conclude this blog, I want to thank everyone who helped me during this senior project: Mr. Cioni, Ms. Fluitt, Dr. Pires, and Felipe. I learned so much about research and so many different life skills like time management, deadlines, etc, and I found this project extremely fulfilling! Thank you all so much!
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