Engineering – Page 7 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Engineering

Mapping the Effect of Disaster-induced Displacement on Social Behavior: The Case of Hurricane Harvey

Motivation/problem statement With the growing influence that social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have on the political ideologies of an individual, our project aims to see if we can track regional political trends through these platforms too. In addition to this we are also looking at ties between climate change based migration and shifting political majorities in the counties around Houston, Texas after Hurricane Maria in 2017. The team at Christopher Fariss’s lab consists of eight urop students who are in a wide variety of schools, from computer science to art, working together in the first year of a multiyear/on going project concerning how social media plays a factor in regional political majority and the impact that climate change has on coastal communities.

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Role of Actin in Health and Disease

Our research culminates to answer the question: what is extracellular actin’s role in health and disease? By examining three different forms of extracellular actin – cell surface bound, free circulating, and those associated with the extracellular matrix – we can understand their application and how they can be used to innovate the tools we currently have to work with diseases.

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Role of Actin in Health and Disease

Our research culminates to answer the question: what is extracellular actin’s role in health and disease? By examining three different forms of extracellular actin – cell surface bound, free circulating, and those associated with the extracellular matrix – we can understand their application and how they can be used to innovate the tools we currently have to work with diseases.

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BME Career Exploration: Examining Students’ Connection with the Field

Historically, BME undergraduate programs have been successful in exposing students to the broad spectrum of knowledge required to adequately address problems in engineering and medicine. While this has allowed for flexibility in the careers that undergraduate biomedical engineers can enter, many BME students believe that the broad curriculum can lead employers to perceive them as underprepared to enter industry positions upon graduation. Recent studies have validated this concern as BME students report fewer co-op and industry internship placements pre-graduation, enter the job market with fewer available jobs seeking BME graduates, and receive lower average annual salaries than other engineering disciplines. However, despite the challenges, students continue to pursue and persist through BME undergraduate degrees. If the perception is that their options are limited in industry, it is important to identify and understand the careers that students view as attainable and choose to pursue. To explore what students perceived as possible for a career upon graduation and how students understand possible careers in BME, this longitudinal study examined changes in BME students’ career aspirations over time. Fourteen (14) undergraduate BME students were interviewed three times over the course of their third year at a large R1, public university. A qualitative, open-coding approach to identify patterns of change at the individual and group levels. Findings indicated that most participants had a narrow initial view of possible careers in the field. Over the course of the study, changes in participants’ understanding of career possibilities were observed based on if they had already decided what career they wished to pursue or not. For those who had not decided on a career yet, concrete exposures to possible BME careers were important to their development of more optimistic BME career outlooks. Suggestions for future research to more broadly understand BME students’ career exploration is also presented.

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Gene Editing for Combating Disease: Biology

The use of non-viral vectors to deliver the CRISPR/Cas9 complex to target cells is beneficial as they can potentially negate the immunological response that a host may have to the viral vector used in the present. In order to validate this, one must first identify the optimal guide RNA for the Cas9 complex to the target DNA sequence, which is done through PCR amplification and gel electrophoresis. The next phase is to image the cells by immunofluorescence. The transfected cells were then compared to the baseline cells to visualize the effects that the CRISPR/Cas9 complex on the cells.

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Gene Editing for Combating Disease: Biology

The use of non-viral vectors to deliver the CRISPR/Cas9 complex to target cells is beneficial as they can potentially negate the immunological response that a host may have to the viral vector used in the present. In order to validate this, one must first identify the optimal guide RNA for the Cas9 complex to the target DNA sequence, which is done through PCR amplification and gel electrophoresis. The next phase is to image the cells by immunofluorescence. The transfected cells were then compared to the baseline cells to visualize the effects that the CRISPR/Cas9 complex on the cells.

Gene Editing for Combating Disease: Biology Read More »

Gene Editing for Combating Disease: Biology

The use of non-viral vectors to deliver the CRISPR/Cas9 complex to target cells is beneficial as they can potentially negate the immunological response that a host may have to the viral vector used in the present. In order to validate this, one must first identify the optimal guide RNA for the Cas9 complex to the target DNA sequence, which is done through PCR amplification and gel electrophoresis. The next phase is to image the cells by immunofluorescence. The transfected cells were then compared to the baseline cells to visualize the effects that the CRISPR/Cas9 complex on the cells.

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Design of a PPI Inhibitor to Treat AAV

Many diseases, such as ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV), are caused by mutated proteins involved in protein-protein interactions (PPIs) that can be inhibited by designer proteins that would serve as small molecule inhibitors. In the case of AAV, the targeted interaction is between TNF-alpha and its associated TNFR1 receptor, which induces the activation of neutrophils in endothelial cells, causing inflammation in AAV patients. By designing a protein which will bind to TNF-alpha, its interaction with TNFR1 can be decreased, thus decreasing patient inflammation. UniDesign from the Zhang Lab was used to design de novo protein sequences from a PDB model of the TNF-alpha and TNFR1 interaction. The results were then analyzed by comparing the binding energy of the designer protein against the native sequence. These results are very promising in the development of protein design as a viable treatment method for rare diseases. This new protein could provide a novel type of treatment to AAV patients that would mitigate the use of glucocorticoids, a common anti-inflammatory agent with long-term side-effects such as increased risk for infections, heart disease, etc.

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Design of novel proteins targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway

The PPI being analyzed is PD-1 to PD-L1. Programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) is a protein involved in regulating the immune system’s T-cell induced apoptosis system by suppressing T-cells. Therefore, PD-1 suppresses and prevents cell apoptosis. PD-1 performs this function in unison with PD-L1 or Programmed Death Ligand 1. The suppression of T-cells can only occur when PD-1 is bound to PD-L1, therefore, this a very important protein-protein interaction. Because this PPI is highly involved in cell cycle regulation it is a common target of cancer treatments. One common cancer treatment is a drug that blocks PD-1 and prevents it from complexing with PD-L1. By hindering this PPI, T-cells’ ability to kill possibly cancerous cells is increased. Using an evolutionary-profile based approach program called UniDesign, 300 possible different peptide sequences were created for PD-1 while keeping PD-L1 the same. Although results have not been obtained we hope to show through the experimental analysis that the designed sequences will have a stronger binding affinity to PD-L1 than PD-1. This research is important because better understanding this PPI plays a large role in cancer treatment research.

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Computational design of protein binders to block the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway

The Programmed Cell Death Protein 1 (PD-1)/Programmed Cell Death Ligand 1 (PD-L1) pathway is crucial in the immune system’s response to cells in the human body. When PD-L1 binds to PD-1 it helps to prevent T-cells from killing other cells, including cancer cells which allows for tumor growth. We used an physics-based approach, EvoEF2, to create an artificial protein based on the structure of PD-1 to competitively bind to PD-L1. We are hoping to show through our binding experiment analyses that our designed proteins will have a stronger binding affinity to PD-L1 than PD-1. While PD-1 inhibitor drugs have been developed they are not completely effective, finding more effective ways to block this pathway could be an important step in future cancer drug research.

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