Princess Noa
Past Projects
During her sophomore year in Intro to Biotech, Princess worked on fascinating projects ranging from extracting DNA to growing yeast. Along with her fellow labmates, she participated in a yEVO competition; which its primary goal is to compare the evolution of yeast with different DNA traits. She consistently observed yeast growing in sodium-bicarbonate over the course of 7 weeks! While experiencing hands-on lab work, Princess learned many new biotechnology skills and is even bio-certified in pipetting and sequencer washing.
Current Projects
Currently, Princess is working on more independent labs like making solutions and Kool-Aid Column Chromatography. During the Chromatography lab, she observed and compared solutions with different propanol measurements. She is also looking forward to using different advanced biotechnology like PCR’s or gel imagers and hopes to find cool results while using them!
Personal
Princess is a proud Samoan who was born and raised in Seattle,Washington. She comes from a family of 8 who also graduated from her current high school. Inspired by her brother's legacy at Foster High School, Princess participates in multiple sports including volleyball, basketball, and softball.
With her career set on being a nurse, Princess joined Biotechnology in hopes of learning more about the human body. Her aspiration is to become a nurse and businesswomen to address the healthcare issues back in her homeland Samoa. Using her medical knowledge, she wants to open up a clinic one day in hopes of inspiring others around her.
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
bioRxiv 2024.04.28.591555; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.04.28.591555Summary:
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