Benny Bergman
The goal of my research is to better understand the cancer suppressing gene, PTEN, and how it impacts cancer. Specifically, I am currently observing what happens to cancer cells when the PTEN is fully removed.
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Abstract:
Abstract:
Tumor suppressor genes work to stop tumors from forming in the body and to attack tumors once they have formed. During a recent experiment, the Shen Lab noticed that when one of the most important tumor suppressors, PTEN, is removed from the body there are fewer occurrences of cancer. This paradoxical discovery prompted the lab to conduct further research. The Shen Lab subsequently released a paper documenting that when PTEN was removed from mice, the histone H1 was no longer present. Histones are the structural support of chromosomes. H1 is a specific histone that, when removed, no longer filters the nucleosome which then causes the immune system to over-engage and thereby increase the body’s ability to fight cancer. The driving research question is: can cancer be reduced through the removal of h1 directly? The goal of this work is to identify a means to reduce cancer without the removal of PTEN which would result in fatality for humans. We hypothesize that we will observe less cancer once we have removed H1, but we predict it will not produce identical results as when PTEN was removed due to other contributing factors. The proposed methodology includes the removal of H1 using CRISPR, injecting the modified DNA into a cell line, and putting the cells into mice. Then, the amount of cancer will be measured as well as any output from the nucleosome.
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