{"id":6392,"date":"2019-07-30T10:55:19","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T14:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/?p=6392"},"modified":"2019-07-29T16:00:14","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T20:00:14","slug":"glowing-worms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/glowing-worms\/","title":{"rendered":"Glowing Worms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Ricky Romersi, Summer Research Intern, Meyer Lab<\/em><\/strong>

I am spending this summer interning for Dr. Joel Meyer, as\npart of project 3 of the Duke Superfund Research Center. Dr. Meyer\u2019s lab uses\nthe nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans<\/em>, as an animal model to investigate the effects of toxicant\nexposure. C. elegans<\/em> is a useful animal model because it is a simple\ninvertebrate that can be manipulated relatively easily, and it reproduces very\nquickly, allowing for many experiments to be carried out in a short period of\ntime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My focus is primarily on the progression of Parkinson\u2019s Disease is effected by a protein called mesencephalic astrocyte derived neurotrophic factor, or MANF. The MANF protein was first isolated from rat astrocytes (a type of cell found in the brain and spinal cord) and has been shown to protect dopaminergic neurons, which are the very same neurons that degrade in Parkinson\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
MANF protein<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In our experiments, the worms are exposed to a toxic form of\ndopamine, which causes damage to their neurons. You can think of this as us\nartificially mimicking or modeling Parkinson\u2019s. We then tag the dopaminergic\nneurons with green fluorescent protein so they can be seen under a microscope and\nso we can evaluate how healthy they neurons are. Additionally, we can tag the MANF\nprotein with red fluorescence and measure the intensity of protein expression\nin the worms. This shows us both how the amount of protein expressed changes in\nresponse to exposure and how neuronal health is affected by increased or\ndecreased expression of MANF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"\"
healthy neuron<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
more unhealthy<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"
unhealthy<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
most unhealthy<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

As of now, our preliminary results seem to confirm that MANF\ndoes indeed help protect the nematodes\u2019 neurons. Hopefully, the results of this\nstudy and others like it can provide insight into a disease that affects many\npeople globally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ricky Romersi, Summer Research Intern, Meyer Lab I am spending this summer interning for Dr. Joel Meyer, as part of project 3 of the Duke Superfund Research Center. Dr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1500,"featured_media":6393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[53,54,55,91,276,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-6392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dusrc-blog","8":"tag-interns","9":"tag-meyer","10":"tag-c-elegans","11":"tag-project-3","12":"tag-interns2019","13":"tag-parkinsons","14":"czr-hentry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1500"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6392"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6402,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6392\/revisions\/6402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nicholas.duke.edu\/superfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}