Within this study researchers will be looking into prospective treatment of a rare type of lymphoma, Waldenström macroglobulinemia (WM), to see which type of an inhibitor would be most efficacious in a clinical environment. This will be done by examining the conceptual and clinical application of the BTK Inhibitor drug known as Ibrutinib and comparing it amongst two other BTK Inhibitor medications Acalabrutinib and Zanubrutinib. This will be tested clinically by treating WM cells with the different drugs to test which would be the most effective at treating WM Lymphoma. The data will be compared to the conceptual nature of the drug, which is how it should react to proposed treatments, by looking at how effective the inhibitory action is in WM B-cells. Results will be analyzed on the basis of cell growth, cell viability and IgM production by WM cells. If a WM cell is more active it will remain viable and produce more IgM proteins. One of the other vital parts to the treatment and development of WM Lymphoma is GLI genes. The GLI genes are essential for embryonic development and are dysregulated in many cancers. In particular, BTK inhibition has been shown to be important for WM biology. Therefore, we will examine the expression of BTK Inhibition in response to the drugs mentioned above. This is vital to cancer research as it is a very difficult form of the condition to treat with no widely accepted treatments as of now so further research into WM Lymphoma is very important to the progression of the research.

Autism spectrum disorder, also known as ASD, is one of the most highly heritable mental conditions, with genes and the environment playing a near equal role in its development. However, there is a need for more research on how genetic variants are involved in both development and phenotype of ASD. A better understanding of these relationships will help us discover other unidentified variants related to ASD and identify what comorbidities and symptoms people may have which will allow us to develop specialized treatments. The plan for this reserach project is to use the “All of Us” database to analyze genetic variants associated with ASD as well as their corresponding phenotypes in human beings.  We will be analyzing 4 specific genes: ABCA13, NAA15, LEO1, and DIP2C. Each gene was identified by Dr. Chris Gunter’s Lab to have high association with behavioral phenotypes in rhesus macaque’s; which are similar to humans, both in terms of their behavior and underlying neuroanatomy. Therefore we be examining human exome sequences in a large database to possibly discover the phenotypes associated with those four variants – if there are any in humans – and, evaluate the results. This will give us better insight on social behaviors that are a factor of specific genes related to those with ASD.  We expect that these phenotypes will not reach the diagnostic criteria for ASD, but finding subthreshold phenotypes in social behavior could guide our next steps to expand this search and look at more genetic variations.

For over 2 billion years, aquatic heterotrophic microorganisms evolved to surround and consume carbon and oxygen produced by photosynthetic cyanobacteria. This microbiome increases the total number of genes present in the consortium and may provide metabolic stability during periods of sub-optimal growth. In previous work, the Sheik Lab has isolated a nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium from Lake Superior that appears to carry a core microbial community; the microbiome has survived alongside the cyanobacterium through multiple rounds of subculturing. I hypothesize that some microbiome species may crucially enhance the cyanobacteria’s metabolic capabilities by carrying helpful genes not present in the cyanobacterium. Using a culturing-based approach to isolate members of the cyanobacteria’s microbiome, I created a defined solid media amended with acetate or glucose as the carbon source to enrich members of the microbiome. In total, I isolated 20 colonies from the acetate media (10 isolates) and glucose media (10 isolates). Of these, five isolates displayed phenotypic differences (colony size, color and shape) and were genome sequenced using Illumina 2x150bp sequencing. Several phenotypes were common between acetate and glucose. However, acetate seemed to have less phenotypic diversity than glucose. My isolation results indicate there is metabolic diversity within the microbiome, as some cultures could only use one substrate. This highlights the uniqueness and versatility of the combined metabolisms of the cyanobacterium and its microbiome partners.