Personal Narrative: My Favorite Gene

Great Essays
Sarah Diaz
Dr. Basu
Bio 572
My Favorite gene

One of my favorite genes that I have had the pleasure of working with is known as PROMININ-1, or PROM-1. One of the reasons why it exists as my favorite gene, is because the research lab that I am interning at studies this gene and its role in a very well known and unfortunate disease, biliary atresia. It also is one my favorites due to the fact that it has a lot of potential applications in studying other diseases or further research. These applications will be discussed shortly. To begin with, we will discuss the basics of the PROM-1 gene and some characteristics that contribute to its role in several types of research. Like in the case of many other genes, PROMININ-1 gene is associated with
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We are studying biliary atresia, an infantile disease which occurs when there is impairment of drainage of bile in the liver. This progresses to biliary fibrosis and can be fatal if left untreated in the first two years after birth. Biliary atresia is the most typical source of end-stage liver disease. A previous study was carried out to identify a cell population expressing the PROMININ-1 gene. Within periportal fibrosis, the expansion of this population was studied and was located adjacent to ductular reactions. This study utilized a mouse model that was infected with the Rhesus rotavirus (RRV) to serve as the BA (biliary atresia) model. One of the reasons I particularly enjoyed this study was because it incorporated many of the recombinant DNA techniques I have learned over the course of this semester that we still currently use in the lab. Some example,es of potential applications of this gene expression using recombinant DNA technology will be discussed shortly. Western Blot analysis, one of the recombinant techniques that we have discussed in this course, was carried out to determine the regulation of the PROMININ-1 expression in the livers with Biliary Atresia in comparison with controls that did not have the disease. qPCR, also known as quantitative PCR, is another technique that we have learned about in this course. This technique was also carried out in order to achieve this comparison between the diseased livers and the normal livers. The results they obtained are significant. They found that the PROMININ-1 expression is upregulated in the livers with BA in contrast to the normal livers. This analysis is seen in the figure below. The image on the left represents the Western Blot, and the image to the right demonstrates the results obtained from qPCR

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