Undergraduate Research Day 2020
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/20158
With students involved in so many research opportunities, Undergraduate Research Day provides the perfect opportunity for them to share their work with the campus community. Held each April, Undergraduate Research Day showcases current research, scholarship, and artistic endeavors.
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Item Linker Domain Size Does Not Impact Bivalent HER3 Targeting Affibody Efficacy(2020) Oubaid, Jinan; Schardt, John; Jay, Steven; Jay, Steven; Schardt, JohnThe Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF) family of receptors, also called ErbB or HER family, is a group of tyrosine kinase transmembrane proteins that have many regulatory purposes including regulating cell proliferation and survival. Members of the HER family rely on forming dimers upon ligand binding to promote downstream signaling. Gene mutations can result in the deregulation of the HER receptors, further resulting in cancer. HER3, a receptor that is deregulated in many cancers including ovarian, breast, and lung cancer, has been found to be responsible for drug resistance to therapeutics that currently exist to target other members of the HER family. This can occur through increased phosphorylation and overexpression of the HER3 receptor. There are many HER3 targeted therapeutics, including monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), that are currently in phase 1 and 2 of clinical studies; however, no HER3 targeted therapeutics have been approved by the FDA. In addition to this, previous studies have demonstrated that not every patient will respond to a specific treatment plan or therapeutic; therefore, the development of various treatment options is essential. An engineered protein known as the affibody, which in previous studies has shown to be highly soluble, thermally stable, and small in size allowing for effective tissue penetration, has emerged as a potential therapeutic agent for cancer. In this study, it was found that multivalent affibodies, which are affibodies with more than one binding domain, are more effective at inhibiting HER3 activation, also known as phosphorylation, and inducing HER3 downregulation than monovalent affibodies in multiple cell lines. Inhibiting receptor activation can be effective at reducing cell proliferation and survivability. In addition, other modifications were made to optimize the affibodies, such as altering the length of the linker that tethers the binding domains in a multivalent affibody together, and to test for their efficacy. Finally, an albumin binding domain was incorporated into the affibody design to help increase affibody half-life, which would be essential for in vivo testing.Item Weakly-Mixing Systems with Dense Prime Orbits(2020) Benda, Aaron; Kanigowski, AdamWe provide the first examples of smooth, weak mixing dynamical systems for which all points have dense orbits along primes.Item Children’s Evaluations of Ingroup and Outgroup Members Following Accusations of Wrongdoing(2020) Ackerman, Elizabeth; D'Esterre, Alexander; Glidden, Jacqueline; Butler, Luke; Killen, MelanieChildren are commonly involved in competitive activities that can result in misunderstands because of differing interpretations of ambiguous situations. This study investigates if the group identity of children affects their interpretation of ambiguous situations when there is an accusation of misconduct. The results support the hypothesis because there was a divergence of evaluations based on team membership following an accusation of cheating.Item Do preschoolers track and evaluate social includers and excluders?(2020) Knoll, Sarah; Woodward, Amanda Mae; Beier, JonathanExclusion leads to negative effects across the social and cognitive domains (Wesselman & Williams, 2013). Because the consequences of social exclusion can be severe, social psychologists have characterized social-cognitive mechanisms for detecting exclusion and motivating responses to mitigate its effects. Although both adults and children respond to exclusion in ways that facilitate social connection, it is unclear whether two components of a system for detecting and responding to social exclusion, tracking and evaluating a prior excluder, are present in early childhood. The current research investigates whether 4- to 6-year-old children track and evaluate social excluders. Children in both experiments played in inclusive and exclusive ball-toss games. Children then reported explicit social evaluations comparing players from each game by answering who was meaner, a better sharer, or a better play partner for a third party. In Experiment 1, four-year-olds (N=32) had mixed evaluations of the players. An exploratory analysis revealed that children who indicated that the includer was a better sharer (n= 19 of 32) viewed the excluder as meaner (18 of 19, p < .001). In Experiment 2, 96 children, ages 4 to 6 years old, participated in a similar procedure to Experiment 1—now including an explicit memory check question. Children who passed the memory check (n = 68) evaluated includers more positively (44 of 68, p = .02) excluders more negatively (46 of 68, p = .004) and recommended that a new puppet play with the includer (49 of 68, p = .003). These effects were primarily driven by younger children, as 6-year-olds did not evaluate excluders negatively. Future work should determine if children younger than 4 years old can track and detect social exclusion.Item Volumetric super-resolution microscopy approaches for investigating synaptic connectivity in the mammalian visual system(2020) Vatan, Tarlan; Speer, ColensoImaging synapses in the brain is difficult due to the diffraction limit of light microscopy, which limits image resolution to ~200nm laterally and ~600nm axially. Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy techniques circumvent this problem, allowing us to visualize subsynaptic molecular interactions. Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (STORM) is a single molecule imaging technique that relies on stochastic photoswitching of organic dyes between fluorescent and non-fluorescent to states to produce a resolution of ~20nm laterally and ~50nm axially. Together with ultra-thin serial sectioning, this approach allows for the collection of volumetric super-resolution data. Expansion Microscopy (ExM), on the other hand, is a different super-resolution approach that does not rely on special dyes or instruments. ExM achieves sub-diffraction-limit image resolution by physically expanding the specimen within a swellable polyacrylamide matrix. This technique is exciting in that it offers a simple, fast, and inexpensive method of achieving high image resolution.Item Understanding Substance Reuse Among Sexual and Gender Minority Individuals With HIV(2020) Tralka, Hannah; Belus, Jennifer; Satinsky, Emily; C.J., Seitz-Brown; Daughters, Stacey; Magidson, Jessica; Magidson, JessicaResearch shows that people living with HIV (PLWH) who are of sexual and gender minority (SGM) status experience higher rates of substance use disorders (SUDs) compared to heterosexual, cisgender individuals; however, there is a lack of research examining substance use treatment outcomes among individuals with multiple minority statuses. This study explored a multiple minority PLWH population to examine how SGM status influences time to substance reuse, frequency of use, and substance use related problems. Participants included 56 PLWH with problematic substance use who were enrolled in an abstinence-focused inpatient substance use treatment center in Washington, DC. Participants completed 16 sessions and were followed over 12 months post treatment. A discrete time to event logit model was used to examine whether SGM status moderated time to reuse. A total of n=21 individuals self-identified as SGM and n=35 identified as non-SGM. Approximately 64% of the sample returned to substance use at least once over the 12 months. At the end of 12-month follow-up, the survival rate was 20.5% of the overall sample. In the non-SGM group, the survival rate was 37.6% compared with 4.8% in the SGM group. The overall time to event model was significant ( λ2= 25.46, p <.001). The odds of reuse for those with SGM status increased by 1.88 [95% CI: .84, 4.19], suggesting likely need for SGM specialized care and those who identify with multiple minority statuses. Despite strengths of the longitudinal design, future work must replicate these findings in a larger sample.