The next generation of scientists are getting their start as undergraduates conducting research alongside our faculty, staff scientists, and graduate students. These students bring essential creativity and hard work to their research, while learning the skills that will prepare them to become accomplished scientists able to make their own breakthrough discoveries. The Department of Biochemistry awards annual scholarships, funded in part by the generosity of individual donors, to help biochemistry majors achieve their research goals. Awards support students’ lab work and provides a stipend for living expenses, allowing students to focus on their research.
Below, six biochemistry majors discuss their research projects in labs across campus.
Kaden Calkins
Lab: Carol Lee
Hometown: Sun Prairie, WI
About my research: When people think about omega-3 fatty acids, they often think about fish, not the algae that makes the compound. Understanding how changing environments impact the nutritional quality of algae prepares us for how these effects amplify up the food chain, to us. My research subjects a freshwater algae species to increasing salt and temperature conditions, mimicking road salt runoff and rising global temperatures, and identifying changes in the algae’s genes and fatty acid composition.
Gavin Chang
Lab: Jason Cantor
Hometown: Blane, MN
About my research: The research in the Cantor Lab overlaps with my interests in cancer cell biology. My project focuses on deguelin, a naturally derived compound that has potential for use as a chemotherapeutic. Over the summer, I plan on continuing to investigate how deguelin can stop cancer cell growth. I hope that my research will one day contribute to the advancement of translatable cancer treatment strategies.
Emma Mayhew
Lab: Audrey Gasch
Hometown: Madison, WI
About my research: I am studying the effect of the drug rapamycin on cells with extra or missing chromosome (aneuploidy). Rapamycin is known to block the TORC1 pathway, which is thought to help regulate the cell cycle. My goal is to remove critical TORC1 genes and see if rapamycin affects these cells more significantly, which would suggest that TORC1 is important for surviving an aneuploid condition. The idea of being able to better understand the connections among cellular processes, such as TORC1 and translation, is so cool.
Claire Schleicher
Lab: Vatsan Raman
Hometown: Sheboygan Falls, WI
About my research: My project involves engineering transcription factor proteins that bind to heavy metals. The goal is to change their sensitivity and specificity to make useful in biosensors. We want to create biosensors that sense heavy metals in water systems at useful concentrations. I really like that my research combines computation and physical biological research. As a double major in biochemistry and data science, it has been really cool to see all of the ways we can apply computation to biological systems.
Paige Sikora
Lab: Aaron Hoskins
Hometown: Green Bay, WI
About my research: SNAPv2 is the 2nd version of a common self-labeling protein tag used to mark proteins in biological systems. While SNAPv2 and other tagging systems have been compared before, there is still a lot to learn about how different systems compare for studying single molecules. I am studying SNAPv2 with the hopes that my lab will be able to use it for single-molecule studies in the future.
Colten Tramburg
Lab: Ci Ji Lim
Hometown: Kenosha, WI
About my research: My research exposes me to new methods and tools to identify structures of proteins such as cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), a technology used for imaging biomolecular structures. Cryo-EM is a process where samples of proteins are frozen in ice and electron beams are shot at the ice to produce a 3D image of the protein. We are working on a method to help researchers keep proteins they are studying in ideal condition during the cryo-EM imaging process.