Brenda Lundt
Catalina Magnet High School
Molecular Mechanisms of Mitochondrial Transport in Axons and Dendrites
Q. Tell us about your school.
It's Catalina Magnet High School in Tucson. This last year I taught five classes of integrated science and one of chemistry. Catalina is an inner-city, urban school with primarily minority students. We have great science facilities and a great department. We've had some opportunities to partner with the BIOTECH Project* and brought some of the biology that we learned in the lab to our class. But all of this science is very novel for my students, so we're pushing their boundaries.
Q. What is the most exciting aspect of your research?
Because I was able to get a couple of different grants, for three summers I've been working in the Zinsmaier Lab on a protein called Miro. It affects mitochondria, and we're looking specifically at nerve cells. Nerve cells are really long, and if the mitochondria don't transport from the cell bodies where they're made to the axon terminals where the transmit signals, you get neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's. So understanding the basic biology of this process may lead to treatments for some of these diseases. This summer I'm working particularly on a genetic screen. We know some things interact with Miro, so we're able to find some mutants with a really dramatic phenotype. We mutagize them and we look for survivors, actually, of subsequent parings. And that gives us some idea of where we might be able to find some suppressor mutations. Or we'll map those genes and try to identify what other proteins are working with Miro to affect other processes in the cells.
Q. What are you bringing to your classroom from this experience?
I'd like to do some fly genetics in my classroom. Flies are easy to take care of, they're great model organisms, so when we're learning about cells and about heredity, I'd like to give my students the chance to breed their own flies to make some hypotheses, to look for those phenotypes, and to really have an opportunity to do a small, independent research project. And learning to work with flies gives me a lot of ability to help them with that process.
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