N. The Very Last BioMinds Entry

This is the last entry concerning the BioMinds Program. During this past year and a half we have been using the technique of phage display to search for specific biomarkers. This program truly helped develop areas that will come in handy in the future. My experience with Dr. Carlos Ríos-Velázquez has been an excellent one. My mentor has been very great, he has shown interest in one’s achievement and stresses the point of his students being “agentes de cambio” or people who can provoke change. I have learned a lot in his lab and has truly motivated to pursue graduate studies.

On March 21, 2009 the BioMinds program hosted the Annual Poster Research Day at the Bioprocess Development and Training Complex at Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. During this day each BioMinds student from the five participating universities presented their posters. During a certain time I had to visit three posters and report their findings. The posters were the following:

Poster H-1: “Development of Molecular Tools to Distinguish Among Bioluminescent Bacteria from the Coasts of Puerto Rico” by Diego Hernández, Josue Malavé and Carlos Ríos.

The importance of this investigation is to determine a method to distinguish bioluminescent bacteria from Puerto Rico. They used two methods: the amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis method and the lux gene method. The amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis method uses the digestion of the 16s rDNA which will result in restriction patterms while the lux gene method will look at the variety lux genes to identify the bioluminescent bacteria.

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Poster N-1 : “Characterizing the inositul 1,4,5-triphosphate receptor” by Arnaldo Carreira and Carlos Acevedo.

The importance of this investigation is to give a insight in autoimmune diseases by studying the inositul 1,4,5-triphosphate receptor (IP3R). They are using HeLa cells and hFOB cells because the IP3R is found in all human cells. The are studying this IP3R to characterize it “in order to compare this protein with its counterpart in anergic B-cells”.

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Poster M-2: “Functional Analysis of Cassava ß-Cyanoalanine Synthase Gene in Arabidopsis Mutants” by Samuel Ares and Dimuth Siritunga.

The importance of this investigation is to study enzymes ß-CAS from Cassava in Arabidopsis mutants. This is important becasue cassava is very important product due to it nutritious and other qualities. They study two ß-CAS gene that regulate different pathways of metabolizing cyanide and assimilation of sulfur and nitrogen. By using these two genes they can see their dependence and interdepence and use spectroscopy to observe enzymatic activity in order to understand better the behavior of them in cassava.

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For the news release visit: http://www.uprm.edu/news/articles/as2009048en.html