Bryce Anderson and Dr. Scott Weber, Microbiology & Molecular Biology
In February last year I was awarded an ORCA grant which turned out to be the starting of one of my biggest learning experiences here at BYU. My research mentor, Dr. Weber, and I work with the immune system. This semester I have been able to see firsthand exactly how things in my field are moved forward. Along with that I have learned many numerous, invaluable techniques that I will no doubt continue to use for many years to come through post undergraduate school along with my career. Also, I was able to work one on one with my research mentor; a learning experience in its self. For my grant proposal we wanted to learn and become familiar in techniques used at other universities to look at T cells and their receptors in order to look at a unique T cell receptor named LLO118. The overall goal was to use our acquired experience and skills to design a T cell receptor as a synthesized therapeutic.
In order to carry out our project I was required to learn a lot of molecular biology and cell biology techniques. One of the major techniques we used to look at T cell receptors is inserting the gene for the T cell receptor into yeast cells and then we can induce them so they display the protein on their cell membrane (outside surface). Because yeast cells are different from mammalian cells the receptor proteins did not always fold correctly. To solve this problem we used a technique called error prone polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This technique allowed us to minimally mutate the DNA encoding for the T cell receptor protein adding to its stability. After these cells had the T cell receptor gene inserted we were able to induce the yeast to display this protein. Using another cell biology technique called flow cytometry we were able to see that proper folding increased over 100 fold.
Working on this project we were able to solve a lot of kinks in our procedure that has benefited our lab a great deal. Our lab is relatively new and it is only Dr. Weber’s second year teaching here at BYU but still we were able to solve numerous problems involving our experiment. We are now in a position where we can start to change our T cell receptor protein to bind with high affinity, one of the biggest steps in making our project useful and beneficial. Along the way we have run into a few problems and because of that we were not able to get as far as we would have like on our project but as I’ve learned this last year that is part of science as well.
Further work will be needed on this project to see it to the end entirely and new members of our lab are already starting on the next steps along with me. We are excited about how much we’ve learned and are continuing to use our new skills to help our understanding or the immune system. The next steps in this project will be to continue to work with yeast display but this time trying to create high affinity mutants that bind much more tightly with its partner receptor.
In all I was able to spend over 300 hours in the lab working on this project. Also, I was able to present at an undergraduate conference, UCUR. Later I presented at the Presidential Conference at BYU. Finally, I was able to present in Chicago Illinois at the Autumn Immunology Conference. An ORCA grant has given me such a huge opportunity to work one on one with Dr. Weber, learn lab techniques I will use for years to come, and give me a chance to share my findings with others along with making important future connections.