Bio-MINDS Research Day May 15, 2009

On this symposium, which took place in the Biotechnology Development and Training Complex on March 21st, all the partipants were able to share their findings during their 3 semesters of lab work.  It was impressive to see the size of the program and how excited the participants were about finally showing the product of their dedication to science.

In this activity, we served as “judges” of other poster presentations by some of our peers.  This allowed us to get a sense of the scope of  areas of research and topics.  For example, one poster that I evaluated described the used of nanotubes to treat post-stroke injuries.  This poster was presented by Roy Suárez.  This project was interesting in the sense that introduces a novel way of treating patients with stroke injuries after the incident and decreasing the effects of miscommunication between affected areas of the brain.  This is an alternative to stroke therapies that only work if patients are treated in a short time-span after the episode.

On a totally different area, Arnaldo Carreira was involved in characterizing the activity of the inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate receptor.  This receptor is relevant for the decrease in immunological tolerance on human cells that may trigger autoimmune deseases.  This is an important project due to the high incidence of autoimmune deseases in Puerto Rico like diabetes mellitus 2.  Due to my experience in a Ca2+ signalling lab, I was curious about the effect of Ca2+ concentration on the activation of the Ca2+-calmodulin dependent calcineurin.  This phosphatase is crucial in cell response to Ca2+ concentrations that affect cell differentiation.  Specifically for this project, it good to understand how the inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate is also involved in the process.

The last poster I was able to evaluate, was from Samuel I. Ares from Dr. Dimuth Siritunga’s lab.  As a plant biotechnologist, Dr. Siritunga is interested in the control of cyanide concentration in cassava, a starchy tuberous root commonly present in the diet of poor farmers in some developing countries in Africa.  A diet high in cassava that is not cooked in the right way, may contribute to a high absorption of cyanide by the body.  This could be fatal to those that rely on this viand for their nutrition.

Growth! May 15, 2009

In February of 2009, the project moved ahead since all the materials and methods where already available to perform the preliminary experimental procedures.  However, due to my young experience working with filamentous fungi, performing the experiment for the first time did not go exactly as expected.  Inoculation of liquid cultures of P. chrysosporium, requires acquisition of fresh spores as a seed for pelletization.  This process involves filtering and quantification of spores that required new aseptic techniques which I had not experience before.  My first trial ended up with some bacterial contamination when culturing cells, however, I observed growth in both rich and basal media, which is one of the main goals of my project.  This proved that the experiments performed by Jimenez-Tobón et al. could be replicated, which is essential to achieve the main objectives of the project.  Still, there is work ahead that needs to be done in order to reach the final objectives.   I would say that a 3 would be a good number to summarize the status of my project.