Download Spoorthi Lawson Program: Summer Accelerated Biomedical

Spoorthi Lawson
Program: Summer Accelerated Biomedical Research SABR) program, Paul L. Foster School of Medicine
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, El Paso Campus
I had an amazing time this summer. I loved the program and learnt a lot of new things for research. My
project was about Pattern of MFRP (Membrane-type Frizzled Related Protein) Expression in the Eye. So
we actually worked with Bovine eye balls (huge) because they are similar to the human eye. I had a
great mentor, Dr. Sundin; he is an amazing person and a genius. The main reason or goal for us to do
the project is to see the MFRP interaction with the inter-photoreceptor matrix (which holds retina and
retinal pigment epithelium together; the detachment of the retina leads to blindness). We choose to
study MFRP because it is a gene which has a recessive mutation which leads to destruction of the
function of MFRP and causes Nanophthalmos (small eyes and extreme hyperopia, i.e. farsightedness with
a refractive error of +8.00 to +25.00 diopters). This was a success for the 10 weeks; we still have lots of
experiments to conduct but unfortunately our program has come to an end. We went to Lubbock to give
our final presentations which went well. Apart from my project, I also got to work with mouse eyes to
conduct experiments for the above project and as well with two strains of mouse genes to see the
mutations on its exons. We used those strains because both the mice strains had a
condition that, instead of running, they were hopping like a rabbit, and we want to see what mutation
and effects cause them to do that. We did PCR's and DNA extractions for 17 exons for each strain. I just
don’t know the results yet. Overall, I would like to say that it was a great experience and the best time I
ever had
!
Spoorthi Lawson