Interested in graduate level research or pursuing an advanced degree after Dartmouth? If so, then check out Nerd Nite, a program that gives the Dartmouth community a look into what Dartmouth graduate students are researching on campus. At the first Nerd Nite of the year, students presented their findings in areas ranging from psychology to evolution to cellular biology.
Kiah Sanders, a fourth year graduate student in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program, started the night with a presentation on Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that enters cells and releases proteins that reprogram the cell to work for it. These parasites trigger an innate immune response and recruit agents that participate in this immune response to help infect more cells.
Sanders currently studies how a mutant form of Toxoplasma gondii can stop the growth of cancer. The mutant form can invade a cell and cause an immune response, but does not replicate and, therefore, is less likely to cause parasite-related complications.
Sanders had hoped that, by injecting mice suffering from ovarian cancer with these mutated parasites, these parasites would cause an immune response that would alert the body to cancer cells and tumors and cause the body to attack these deadly cells. She reported that through the injection, she was able to prolong her mice’s lifespan and slow the growth of cancerous cells. In the future, Sanders reported that she would like to “specifically target the cancer by engineering the mutant strain [of Toxoplasma gondii] to express cancer specific antigens.”
Next, Alison Mattek, from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, discussed the positive psychological effects of meditation and mindfulness.
Research indicates that meditation and mindfulness favorably impact people’s scores on mental health tests, but Mattek wants to know why. Thus far, researchers have discovered that those who are mindful have less activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that plays a role in emotional responses.
Mattek’s research evaluates the specific circuitry in the brain that relates to anxiety and anxiety disorders and how meditation improves mental health test scores. In her research, Mattek will continue to look at how mindfulness and successful mediation affect a person’s interpretation of stimuli.
The night ended with a presentation by Thomas Kraft from the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Program on the evolution of the pygmy phenotype, which codes for a small body size. This pygmy body type has evolved separately in hunter-gatherer populations in regions of Africa and Southeast Asia where there are dense rain forests and high humidity. The men in these populations have average heights of approximately 150 centimeters, which translates to four feet eleven inches.
Kraft is currently investigating why this phenotype is evolutionarily favored; he asserts that these pygmy populations have evolved to gain mobility and efficiency in dense forests. Using accelerometers, he tests the movement of men of normal stature versus movement of pygmy men. He is also using a mobile respirometry system to measure how much oxygen pygmy men breathe versus how much he and his team breathe and employs the same test to determine how much carbon dioxide each group expels
He has found that the pygmy men were much more efficient in their use of oxygen and in their movement due to their smaller size. The next phase of Kraft’s research includes a trip to Malaysia, where he will study the Batek tribe.
If you want to learn more about groundbreaking graduate research at Dartmouth, come to Nerd Nite. The event is open to Dartmouth undergraduates.