Sofie PatzakBiological Sciences Senior and pre-PA Hi Guys! Speaking from experience, I know it can be a bit daunting deciding on the best Bio 2 (BIOSC 006X) lab for you. Because of this, I just wanted to give a basic overview of the Neural Defects lab and why I ended up enjoying it so much! In the Neural Defects lab, we focused on the neural tube and proteins that assist in its formation. So what is a neural tube and why is it so important? The neural tube begins as a very small ribbon which then develops into the brain or the spinal cord during fetal development. Improper development or closure of this tube can lead to birth defects like spina bifida, which cause a protrusion of the spinal cord through the spine. Symptoms of spina bifida can range from mild to severe and affect 1,500 babies in the United States per year. Because neural tube formation is crucial to proper development, the initial stages of our lab class were dedicated to understanding how neural plate cells form a neural tube. From there, we were able to examine what mutations resulted in neural tube changes and what effect these genetic alterations had on the phenotypes of our model organisms—flies. Shroom, for example, is a protein that has been found to be very important in the bending of neural cells to get proper closure of the spine. Because of this, most of our research in Neural Defects involved mutating Shroom protein to figure out how Shroom and other proteins interact to control shape changes in cells. While flies do not have neural tubes, they express Shroom proteins in other epithelial cells such as their eyes and wings, where these shape changes can be easily observed. Our research on Shroom and other proteins in flies can inform us of protein interactions that may be involved during human neural tube formation. Understanding and being able to manipulate these protein interactions could bring us one step closer to limiting the cases of neural tube defects seen in thousands of newborns each year. Reasons why I found this lab was a match for me:
Get more info about different Intro BIOSC lab choices here: https://www.biology.pitt.edu/undergraduate/intro-research-courses
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January 2022
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