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Jeffrey L. Sadino
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Jeffrey L. Sadino
MSU Research
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I
know what you're thinking: "What the heck is that a picture of?" The
short answer-my DNA! The long answer is that it's an image of my cheek
DNA injected into a human embryonic kidney cell, injected again with red
fluorescent markers, and then imaged under a fluorescent microscope.
Pretty cool huh?! We did lots of fun things like that in the
MML.
To be serious for a moment, for this project I would use green fluorescent proteins (GFP) for the rapid identification of protein function. The idea is that if, when we image the cells, we see patterns in the locations of the GFP, then that is indicative of the unknown protein's function. This picture shows protein localization in several intracellular organs:
Going beyond two dimensions, I also created datasets that varied through the z-axis and throughout time, giving us a three-dimensional time-lapse view of the proteins when they moved in the cells. From these large datasets, the need arose for automation procedures, which I wrote in the proprietary IP Labs Scripting Language.
At MSU, the USP and INBRE programs offer competitive grants to students who write applications for meritorious research. My application won a stipend for $750 per semester, the maximum amount awarded.
