Visiting Summer Science Awardees
The Visiting Summer Scientist Awards are aimed towards faculty members who are interested in learning new skills to establish their own research laboratories. The objective is for the selected faculty member to work in a collaborating institution with experts in their field in order to obtain the necessary skills to establish their own research laboratories here at ASU. This award includes summer salary and housing costs.
Dr. Audrey Napier, Co-Director of RIMI Program
The purpose of our visiting summer scientist awards is to give our faculty members the opportunity to go away for the summer and conduct research in a different laboratory in order to learn new techniques, establish collaborations and/or to enhance their own research projects. This summer I was fortunate enough to be able to do all three. I spent the month of June as a visiting summer scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Gregory J. Cole at North Carolina Central University (NCCU). The purpose of this visit was to establish the ground work for a collaborative project between my laboratory here at ASU and his at NCCU. My summer research experience included microinjecting Hoxa3 morpholinos into zebra fish eggs and observing any phenotypic differences from uninjected eggs. I conducted a couple of in situ hybridization experiments to look at the expression pattern of Hoxa3 in zebra fish at different ages. Additionally, I tested a couple of antibodies (one against Hoxa3 and the other against Pax1) in immunohistochemistry experiments to see if they would cross react with zebra fish protein. Although my time was quite limited the results of these studies were encouraging, and the learning experience was quite motivating. My goal now is to expand my research to include zebra fish as a model system for my experiments.