Biology

As a promising and fairly new field, bioplastics are a topic of high interest in the scientific community. Mainly due to their significant environmental benefits compared to traditional plastics, many studies have found good reason to research them. The aim of this project was to compare bioplastics of various compositions to each other through an assortment of physical tests. This ... Read More

Neuroblastoma, the most common extracranial solid tumor in childhood, is hallmarked by epigenetic deregulation as a driver of oncogenesis. Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) methylates lysine 27 on histone 3 (H3K27me1-2-3), is generally associated with transcriptional silencing through deposition of H3K27me3 at promoter regions. In contrast to H3K27me3, 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) is an intermediate generated in the active demethylation of methylated ... Read More

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive, and often fatal, disease, and is the leading cause of dementia in older people (Chang et. al, 2003). Based on the amyloid-ß oligomer hypothesis, the brain damage that leads to Alzheimer’s is due to soluble, ligand-like amyloid-ß oligomers (AßOs) (Lambert et. al, 1998, Gong et. al, 2003, Cline et. al, 2018). The aim of this ... Read More

We are conducting experiments to investigate the effects of overexpressing a long-non coding RNA, known as PNCTR, in cells that typically exhibit low expression levels of PNCs, a metastatic cancer marker. Our objective is to determine whether augmenting the expression of PNCTR in these cells can increase the number of PNCs present. Our research is motivated by a prior study ... Read More

The desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) is a species of concern in the southwest region of the United States, and is noted as declining in recent years. Successful conservation requires an understanding of the species’ population dynamics. However, this collection of information is scattered throughout studies and models regarding the tortoise’s life history does not exist. Thus, I developed conceptual life ... Read More

Ten-Eleven Translocation (TET) enzymes play a critical role in DNA demethylation, which is essential for mammalian development and differentiation. Recent research suggests that the absence of TET enzymes is associated with an increased risk of malignancies. Among the TET enzymes, TET2 is the most commonly mutated and the focus of our investigation. Using gene editing techniques based on clustered regularly ... Read More

Angel Alvarez: Director, Stem Cell Core, Northwestern University

Credentials

• PhD, Biomedical Sciences, University of Central Florida
• Certificate in Life Science Entrepreneurship, University of Alabama at
• Birmingham
• BS, Biological Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago