Poly Research Initiative Presents Data at Caltech

As part of the Poly Research Initiative’s inaugural Senior Biological Research class directed by Dr. Bala Selvakumar, three students completed phase one of a collaborative research project and presented their data to Dr. Dianne Newman at her lab at the California Institute of Technology. Four contributed data to the antibiotic resistance database at Tufts University.

The student presentations at Caltech involved data generated at Poly: designing, testing, and optimizing a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based detection method for two genes that the Newman lab works with. Both these genes are involved in degrading phenazines, a family of molecules produced naturally by bacteria with antimicrobial properties.

The Poly Research Initiative would like to thank Dr. Newman for her support in designing a research project where students could make a potential contribution to her lab based on experiments run entirely at Poly; for her feedback on the student data; and for providing important biological material resources such as microbial strains with and without the two genes to use as rigorous controls for the PCR optimization.

Please find below student commentary on their experience in the Senior Biological Research class: