Francis Salazar

Past Projects

Enrolled in Intro Biotechnology in his freshman year, he learned biotechnology skills and the use of lab equipments. He has done OSHA 10H General Industry, DNA extraction and yEVO to list a few. The yEVO took 7- weeks. He worked on growing the yeast and increasing the concentration of caffeine. In the end each group of environmental conditions would compete their yeast in a petri dish. The yeast strain with the most colonies has a higher fitness. For caffeine it was gray and orange.

Current Projects

Currently, Francis is working on Kool-Aid Column Chromatography. By the end of the lab, he should be able to observe the colors that are used in Kool-Aid. In the test tube there should be red and blue food dyes that are used in grape kool-aid. He is also looking forward to Unit 7 Proteomic and Cancer. He is very interested in learning more about the diseases and the exciting lab work that it involves.

Personal

Francis was born in the Philippines. He lived there for 8 years and during his time. He learned the values of a Filipino, from being respectful, valuing quality time and having a positive outlook in life.

He also likes to manage his work to be as efficient as possible. Although he is the type of person to plan ahead, he struggles on having a clear picture on his career but one thing is clear. He wants to be part of the medical field. He’s very passionate about taking care of people's health and well being.

Publications

Experimental evolution of S. cerevisiae for caffeine tolerance alters multidrug resistance and TOR signaling pathways

Renee C. Geck, Naomi G. Moresi, Leah M. Anderson, yEvo Students, Rebecca Brewer, Timothy R. Renz, M. Bryce Taylor, Maitreya J. Dunham

G3, 2024, 14(9), jkae148; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.04.28.591555

Summary:

Yeast can adapt to grow in high concentrations of caffeine. In collaboration with high school students, we grew yeast in increasing concentrations of caffeine to select for ones better adapted to caffeine. We sequenced these yeast to identify mutations that promote growth in caffeine, and showed they are related to pumping caffeine out of the cell, or changing pathways within the cell that are otherwise blocked by caffeine.

Complete Paper is available on the on the G3 - Genes, Genomes, Genetics website and is titled “Experimental evolution of S. cerevisiae for caffeine tolerance alters multidrug resistance and TOR signaling pathways”

Experimental evolution of S. cerevisiae for caffeine tolerance alters multidrug resistance and TOR signaling pathways

Renee C. Geck, Naomi G. Moresi, Leah M. Anderson, yEvo Students, Rebecca Brewer, Timothy R. Renz, M. Bryce Taylor, Maitreya J. Dunham

bioRxiv 2024.04.28.591555; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.04.28.591555

Summary:

Yeast can adapt to grow in high concentrations of caffeine. In collaboration with high school students, we grew yeast in increasing concentrations of caffeine to select for ones better adapted to caffeine. We sequenced these yeast to identify mutations that promote growth in caffeine, and showed they are related to pumping caffeine out of the cell, or changing pathways within the cell that are otherwise blocked by caffeine.

Complete Paper is available on the on the bioRxiv preprint server for Biology and is titled “Experimental evolution of S. cerevisiae for caffeine tolerance alters multidrug resistance and TOR signaling pathways”

Experimental evolution of caffeine-tolerant yeast alters multidrug resistance and PP2A-like signaling pathways

We successfully evolved caffeine-tolerant clones in collaboration with high school classrooms using our yEvo protocol. The most commonly observed mutations corroborate previous findings that yeast evolved to have increased caffeine tolerance acquire different mutations than the mutation profile from other selective pressures like azole drugs.

Research completed under the guidance of Dr. Renee C. Geck of the Dunham Lab by Foster High School's Intro to Biotech class as part of the yEvo project 2022-2023 School year.

230720_PNWYC_Geck_poster.pdf