Chelsea took a year off after graduating from IU with a degree in chemistry in 2009. She worked full time in the lab during this ‘year off’ to gain some research experience from Summer 2009 to Spring 2010. She has been accepted into medical school at Indiana Univeristy School of Medicine and will start in August 2010. To hear about her lab experiences in her own words, see below. Good luck Chelsea! – CD3
My name is Chelsea Adalen Troiano. Schwing (Xiaohui) usually calls me Woo Girl, so I respond to almost anything. I was born and raised in Indiana, going to Cathedral High School and then to Indiana University, Bloomington, where I graduated with a Bachelors in Chemistry. Currently, I am taking a year in between undergraduate and medical school to explore my love for science research, and it’s so much fun! (I am also a yoga master. When we have some free time, I lead everyone in lab in practice that will bring positive karma to our experiments!)
I work with Schwing on cis-regulatory RNA elements called riboswitches. Specifically, we work with GEMM motif riboswitches which bind specifically to the secondary messenger, cyclic diguanylate (c-di-GMP). This ligand is especially interesting because varying cellular concentrations have been shown to influence bacterial lifestyles. Therefore, understanding the pathway in which these riboswitches are involved, may lead to the ability to manipulate bacterial behavior. The importance of this is significant for in-body medical devices such as pacemakers, heart and urinary catheters. Such devices serve as surfaces for biofilm formation which invites microbial infections. Upon solving the mystery of the relationship between GEMM motifs and lifestyle, we could prevent biofilm formation and thus infection!! Yay!!
Hopefully I will be able to take all that I have learned to do further research in medical school, as these riboswitches may serve as a new antibiotic target. I love science and I love medicine, and this project is perfect as a combination of the two!
The College of Arts