2014 Research Highlights

Tope Agabalogun, a senior at Harvard College concentrating in human evolutionary biology and mind brain and behavior

Used gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) to examine the relative level of mutations in the FMRP-I gene set to better understand the role they may play in schizophrenia and autism.

Kennedy Agwamba, a junior at Harvey Mudd College majoring in mathematical and computational biology

Analyzed various microevolutionary changes to identify candidate virulence factors in clinical isolates of Candida albicans following murine host passage.

Lindsey Crawford, a senior biology major at Clark Atlanta University

Used transcriptional profiling databases to find modes of action for small molecule IL-10 enhancers.

Andrea Ekey, a senior mathematics major at Howard University

Investigated functional relationships between small-molecule compounds using a catalogue of gene-expression data known as the Connectivity Map.

Brenda Gutierrez, a junior biochemistry major at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Used exome sequencing to isolate potential substrates of UFL1, an E3 ligase implicated in schizophrenia.

Naomi Nkinsi, a junior at the University of Washington majoring in Public Health and Cellular Molecular Biology.

Brian León, a senior biology and computer science major at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

Worked on understanding the substrate specificity of modifications on RNA by using data from a novel sequencing method that provides information about secondary structure on RNA.

Uriel Sanchez, a junior molecular and cellular biology major at The Johns Hopkins University

Identified relationships between species diversity in pulmonary bacterial communities and the adaptive immune system.

Juan Serrano, a senior medicinal chemistry and molecular genetics major at the University of Florida

Synthesized cyclic sulfamidate fragments from 1,2-amino alcohols in a pilot study building chiral fragment libraries.

Heather Sonnemann, a junior majoring in biological sciences at Arizona State University

Investigated TERT promoter mutations in cancer.

Chrystal Thomas, a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University

Explored different fixation methods to halt transcription in macrophages infected with Candida albicans in order to facilitate the development of an imaging and RNA-seq analysis pipeline.