The Essence of My Research
When a woman is pregnant she may develop Preeclampsia, a condition characterized by pregnancy-induced hypertension, and protein found in the urine. This is bad for both the mother and the baby, as a concequence the baby will need to be delivered early. Early delivery often results in low birth weights and high mortality. The research project which I am a part of is called Healthy Prenancy, Healthy Baby. My DNA samples will be looking at the vascular side of hypertension in pregnant women, and the possiblitiy of a genetic connection between hypertension in pregnant women and early birth. The entire study looks at the genetic, social and enviromental effects that can create adverse birth effects, and whether or not it is African American mothers have genetic differences in the candiate genes which lead to the risk.
Within the Healthy Pregnancy Study I am working on identifying specific allele differences with in candiate genes, and how these differences afffect the populations risk to develop adverse bith outcomes and maternal medical complications. A mixture of DNA is placed into wells of Taqman plates, a Polymerase Chain Reaction is run on the plates to amplify the DNA.
The amplificatin process (which I think is really cool, now that I understand it) happens by the splitting of the double helix, creating two separate strands. These other halves of the strands are then created by free floating nucleotides, A, G, C and T, phosphates and sugars. Probes are also added to the mixture, they are smaller DNA fragment with a fluorescent marker at the end. As the fragments are attached to the halves, the Primers (the Primers are a short sequence of DNA that defines the beginning and the end of the fragment to be amplifies) break off the fluorescent marker at the end. As this happens all the markers collect together, the intensity of this collection is what the scanner reads!
After the data has been scanned by the scanner, I analyze the data, sorting it into hopefully nice allele groups. After all the information has been run, I will get to interpret the information using statistics!
I'm pretty excited to see it all coming together now, and to understand it all!!!
