Rothsaida

Rothsaida
Everett High School
Everett, MA

Mentor:
Xun Chen
Regev Lab
 

“If I wasn’t going to be in school [this summer], I had to be in a place where I could keep being curious and asking questions,” reflected Rothsaida. Fascinated by the genomics approach that many scientists at the Broad have to answering unanswered questions in biology, Rothsaida dedicated her summer to improving techniques to study single-cell genomics. A burgeoning field, single-cell genomics looks at one cell at a time, giving information about genomic diversity that is often lost in traditional, bulk genomics techniques. Rothsaida’s project involved developing a protein purification protocol that will later be used to purify novel engineered enzymes for single-cell genomics applications. Using cobalt column polyhistidine tag protein purification, Rothsaida determined the optimal conditions under which to purify several enzyme engineering precursors. 

“I definitely feel like I have the tools and skills to pursue biology as my major in college after doing this program. It really gave me the chance to see what research is like and all of the skills, scientific and nonscientific, that I’ll need to attempt to tackle the unsolved mysteries of science.”