What 艾米丽·马里诺 didn't expect to find in the lab

为世博会做准备

From 艾米丽·马里诺's first day as a Bobcat, she knew she would be spending a lot of time in a lab, 进行实验, 和 writing her 荣誉导师学院 (HTC) senior thesis.

What she didn't know was that it would be so much fun, 她会交到很好的朋友, 和 she would be presenting her work on the prevalent but potentially dangerous Staphylococcus aureus bacteria at 学生世博会 4月7日.

"It's been a long journey to this point for sure! This project is my HTC senior thesis, 和 ever since I joined the 卡罗尔 Lab my freshman year, I've tried to keep in mind that I would need to have a thesis project eventually. 我安排了一个辅导班. 卡罗尔 my sophomore year to start nailing down an idea, 和 I've been interested in extracellular vesicles (EVs) produced by Staphylococcus aureus ever since,”马里诺说。, an 生物科学专业 辅修德语. 罗南·卡罗尔博士.D.，副教授 生物科学 在文理学院.

"My favorite part of doing research has been working with the other people in the 卡罗尔 Lab,马里诺说. "They're an amazing group of people 和 make coming into work every day so fun. I think it's so important to be happy 和 having fun in the environment you work in. If you're not having a good time, your science is going to reflect that. Aside from that, I love being in a larger lab for the collaboration 和 exchange of ideas. My project wouldn't exist without Raeven Bastock 和 保罗Briaud combining ideas from their respective projects together, 和 I think some of the best science comes out of collaborations like that."

Marino added that when it comes to mentorship, giving is as important as receiving.

"The most fun part has been training some of our newer undergrads in the lab as they helped me finish up some of my experiments! I've been teaching 艾米丽Sudnick 和 Riley Zielinski how to culture human cells 和 perform cell viability assays. They're so fun to work with, 和 I've loved getting a chance to mentor 和 teach others,她说.

她想解开的谜团

Bastock, 分子与细胞生物学 和 生物科学博士.D. 卡罗尔实验室的候选人, has been working on projects investigating Staphylococcus aureus bacteria at two different physiologically relevant temperatures for the bacteria—37°C is core body temperature, 和 34°C is the temperature of the anterior nares (of a person's nose), where approximately 30 percent of the population has harmless colonies of Staphylococcus aureus. 保罗Briaud, 实验室里的博士后, took this idea a step further 和 decided to look at the differences in EVs produced by S. aureus at these two important temperatures.

"Paul got a really interesting result: the EVs produced at 34°C were more toxic to human macrophages, 一种免疫细胞, 比在37°C下生产的要多. 这个结果出乎意料, as 34°C is normally thought of as the 'colonization' temperature, while 37°C is thought of more as the 'infection' temperature,马里诺说.

"I wanted to try to solve the mystery of this interesting result, 和 I had already been building my skills taking care of our human macrophage cells for the lab, 和 thus my thesis project was born!她说.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are nano-sized, 球形, bilayered membrane vesicles that contain proteins, 多糖, 脂质, 和, 对卡罗集团很重要, 核酸.

"We hypothesize that the fusion of bacterial EVs, produced at different physiologically relevant temperatures, with host cells can deliver varying RNA molecules that influence host cell gene expression in different ways,马里诺说. 为了验证这个假设, THP-1-derived macrophages were exposed to EVs produced by Staphylococcus aureus grown at 37°C 和 34°C. 暴露于S. aureus EVs on macrophage gene expression was evaluated using RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) 和 compared to non-infected controls. Analyzing host cell response to EV34 和 EV37 using RNA-seq allows us to examine on a global level how RNA introduced to human cells can influence gene expression."

导师和同事

“我的主要导师当然是Dr. 卡罗尔. 我想有一天拥有自己的实验室, 和 I hope that I can be as great a mentor to my future students as he has been to our lab. He's always there when you need him 和 has been extremely encouraging throughout the entire duration of my project,马里诺说.

"We have a lot of really fantastic people in our lab who tend to fall victim to imposter syndrome (myself included), 博士和. 卡罗尔 will believe in you even when you start doubting yourself."

Marino cites additional faculty members who have supported her throughout her research,  including 国际T和a 和 唐纳德Holzschu in Biological Sciences 在文理学院; 艾琳·墨菲 in the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicne; 和 詹妮弗·海恩斯 in Chemistry 和 Biochemistry 在文理学院.