MxAA 2014 Stipend Recipient: Parisa ’12

This summer (2014) I fulfilled my 8-week research requirement of the McNair Scholars Program by working as a research assistant in Benjamin Wolozin’s neurodegeneration laboratory in the pharmacology department at Boston University Medical Center.  I worked under a Biomolecular Pharmacology/Biomedical Neuroscience Ph.D. candidate named Joon Yvette Boon on a project focused on the neuropathology of Parkinson’s Disease (PD).

 

The two major proteins involved in PD are α-synuclein and leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2). α-synuclein is the protein that aggregates in Lewy Bodies (LB) which is the hallmark of PD. Mutations in the LRRK2 gene cause autosomal-dominant, late-onset PD.1 Recent studies have shown that α-synuclein has different transcript variants with either a long or short 3’ untranslated region (UTR) and the relative amount of each transcript variant has an implication in PD.2  Recent studies have also demonstrated that LRRK2 plays a key role in transcription.3 My project was to determine if LRRK2 had a transcriptional regulatory role in α-synuclein production and aggregation, as we hypothesized. We found that co-expression of α-synuclein with either long or short 3’UTR and wild-type LRRK2 in HEK293FT cells led to an increase in α-synuclein production in relative to without LRRK2 as measured by florescence level of the GFP-tagged α-synuclein. In addition, we also investigated the effects of mutant variants of LRRK2 (G2019S and R1441C) on α-synuclein expression. Our results demonstrated that α-synuclein with the short 3’UTR is expressed more strongly than α-synuclein with the long 3’UTR . 

 

I am currently a rising junior at Boston College, and while I will not continue working at the Wolozin laboratory in the fall (due to travel time and other extracurriculars) I have gained a lot through this opportunity. As a pre-medical student, I have a new and valuable tool under my belt: bench-work and laboratory experience. As a scientist, I have two new mentors (Joon and Dr. Wolozin) and a more in-depth knowledge about the molecular interactions of proteins within Parkinson’s Disease. As a scholar, my passion for neuroscience has become more prominent than ever, and I leave the lab with more questions than I had coming in.

 

At the culmination of the eight weeks, I presented our data at a research symposium at Boston College and will be presenting at another symposium there in the spring. Without the stipend from Middlesex− that went to supporting my transportation, meal, and housing costs− this experience simply would not have been possible. Thank you, Middlesex!