The overall objective of this Career Advancement Award is for the PI to learn molecular techniques to enhance her research career and to improve her capabilities for mentoring minority and female students in biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio, a minority-serving institution.
Intellectual Merit: Lateralization of cerebral function is found in a variety of species, ranging from amphibians to mammals, but the genetic basis of functional asymmetry is not known. Recently the PI and her colleagues demonstrated differential expression of functional genes in the right and left hippocampal formation of the developing rat. Surprisingly, they found that differentially expressed genes were more robustly expressed in the right hippocampus in the first week of life but were more highly expressed in the left hippocampus in the second week and in young adults. These are exciting and novel results. It is not known, however, when lateralized expression first occurs during development or whether the shift in lateralized expression can be modified by environmental stimuli.
Here the PI will test the hypothesis that lateralized gene expression patterns first occur in the embryonic hippocampus. Using microarrays and Real-Time (RT) PCR, expression patterns of genes related to neuronal function will be compared in the right and left hippocampi from embryonic and early postnatal rats. Data generated here will serve as the basis for future experiments aimed at determining whether developmental genes or environmental factors influence the initial establishment of preferential gene expression. The PI will also test the hypothesis that experience during early postnatal development affects lateralized expression of synapse-related genes. Preliminary data indicate that handling young animals may delay or prevent the right-to-left shift in preferential gene expression in the hippocampus. If this is the case, the present study will be the first to demonstrate that environmental factors can influence the development of lateralized expression patterns of functional genes in the mammalian brain.
The results of this work will provide novel insights into the development of asymmetric patterns of gene expression in the brain and will lead to future experiments by the PI on the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to lateralized gene expression.
Broader Impacts: This project will both advance discovery and enhance the training and education of students in the biological sciences. It will also broaden the participation of minorities and females in biology and will enhance the infrastructure for scientific research by increasing collaborative partnerships. The PI is a senior investigator with a successful record of mentoring minorities and women in neuroscience. Here she will advance her career in biology by learning the molecular techniques necessary to complete the proposed experiments in her lab at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), a Hispanic-serving institution. To do so, she will collaborate with investigators at an established research institution. She will spend time in her collaborator's lab and will learn how to use microarrays and RT-PCR to analyze gene expression patterns. In addition, she will audit courses on molecular and cell biology at her home institution and will attend local seminars and symposia at meetings related to the molecular aspects of brain development. The results of the experiments will be broadly disseminated; they will be published in relevant journals, and the PI will give seminars and informal talks on the data.
Both minority and female students will participate in all aspects of the present project and will interact with the PI's collaborators, thereby enhancing their chances of completing a degree in the biological sciences. At least 3 minority students and 2 female students (undergraduate and graduate) will be recruited for the project. Minority students currently make up 57% of the student population at UTSA, and many students are interested in participating in research. Students will learn basic lab techniques and the methodologies for assaying gene expression patterns in the brain. They will learn to present data and to write abstracts and manuscripts. The PI will provide informal counseling about postgraduate and summer research programs, as well as career options. Importantly, the PI will incorporate her new knowledge into her teaching activities at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Because minority students account for at least half of the students in her classes, this project
