Week three of the semester is here and the lab is up and busy!

Larissa has been working on many things including troubleshooting an nfe2 clone that she developed in her postdoc. She also is beginning the process of cloning cfap70 (cilia and flagella related protein 70) which will be used in an in situ hybridization project planned for later this semester. Cfap70 was shown in previous research to be affected by loss of nfe2. We are hoping to see from the in situ experiment if cfap70 is found near the inner ear and therefore connected to the deformities seen in otic vesicle development in my project. I have been working on mastering microinjecting so that nfe2 can be knocked down in the Brn3c fish. I will be using an nfe2 morpholino that will bind to the mRNA and prevent translation. Hopefully if nfe2 is playing a role in inner ear development, we are hope to see more deformed structures than the group that still had intact nfe2. Quang is finishing up his discussion for his bioinformatics portion of his thesis. He has now also begun the process of making primers for the genes he identified in his bioinformatics project and will soon be using this to make an alas2 clone to further study the functions of these genes. Alex is continuing her work on the ChIP project, which has been held up by poor breeding by her strain of fish. She recently though received some new adults of the same strain all the way from Oregon (my home state!). Hopefully these new fish, plus some changes in sample size will allow Alex to continue her hard work on finishing this project. Jacob today gave a wonderful presentation to the fellow biochem and chemistry students and faculty here at Bates. He described his work testing the effects of phthalate exposure on fish with and without nfe2 and nrf3. Now that he has finished this section, Jacob is now going to moving on to looking at other nrf proteins and the effects of phthalates on fish with and without these different proteins. Another busy week with hopefully more successes to come!