Crazy Lab and My Research Question
Greetings fellow readers! I hope that everyone has been doing great. I certainly have been and the past few weeks in the lab have been action-packed and I’ve learned a great deal more. It seems that everyday, ground-breaking articles are published and the amount of reading that I’ve been doing keeps piling up! The research process has truly been amazing and I’m going a bit crazy trying to just keep up with all the developments. Our lab has also been extremely exciting! The great Jen Reedy, the MD-PhD student in our lab, just gave her dissertation yesterday and there was a cornucopia of celebrations in the lab.
My project in the Heitman lab revolved around the fungus Mucor, whose existence has been known for quite some time but little work has been done regarding its pathogenicity and its sexual cycle. It is a pathogenic fungus known to infect immunocompromised patients, such as those inflicted with HIV, causing a disease called mucoralsis. I will spare you the rather gruesome pictures of this infection. My project focuses in on a specific portion of the Mucor genome- that which governs its sex.
In Mucor, it has been found that there are two mating types, denoted a and α. Surrounding the gene that encodes for the mating type are two other genes. In my project, I will investigate whether this sequence of genes is conserved across the known isolets of Mucor (conservation of genes is termed synteny).
Finally, a picture of my fungus!
In other news, I’ll be heading up to NYC this weekend for a non-profit organization I’ve been involved in! It’ll be my first trip to the Big Apple and I will keep everyone posted (with pictures) about what happens!
