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Elizabeth Troisi ’14 and Professor Justin Hines work in the lab.
Biology majors Elizabeth Troisi ’14 (Londonderry, N.H.) and Phil Nguyen ’14 (Allentown, Pa.) presented research they performed with Justin Hines, assistant professor of chemistry, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology.
Nguyen tied for second runner up in the undergraduate poster competition, and he and Hines were featured in the society’s newsletter. Troisi, who is also a member of the track and field team, won a travel award from the society to attend the meeting based on the strength of her abstract and application.
Phil Nguyen ’14 with his winning poster at the conference
Both students are studying the interaction of molecular chaperone proteins with yeast prions, which are proteins that misfold into the same type of structures that cause Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Molecular chaperones work to prevent and fix protein misfolding and studying these interactions will be useful in treating associated diseases. The students worked with Hines through the EXCEL Scholars undergraduate research program and are completing related honors theses under his guidance.