About Brittany Gaither
Major Cell and Molecular Biology
College Arts and Sciences
Accomplishments Dean's List, Bronze Medal at iGEM Giant Jamboree, Presenter at Student Research Week
Research Interests Bioinformatics and protein/cell/organism engineering
About the Project
Title Salty Shrimp: Mutations That Allow Them to Survive in One of the Saltiest Places on Earth
Presentation Watch the research video
Mentor Dr. Pablo Artigas
Cell Physiology and Molecular Biophysics, Texas Tech UniversityHSC
Comments
Hi, I enjoyed listening to your research. I was curious if you could describe to me the process of using the two-electrode voltage clamp?
It may be a little difficult to explain without visuals, but I will do my best! We started with an oocyte that had been injected with mRNA that coded for the sodium-potassium pump. We then loaded the oocytes in a high salt concentration for about an hour and applied a low concentration of ouabain, if we wanted to disable endogenous pumps. The oocyte was then impaled with 2 electrodes. The membrane potential was held constant (voltage clamping) and the current was measured in response to different solutions being passed through the bath. When studying the sodium-potassium pump, we often applied solutions with varying concentrations of K+. Hope that helped!
Do you know what other kinds of life forms are in the Salt Lake? Do they have similar adaptations to the salt as the brine shrimp?
We have found an insect, the water boatman, and are currently looking at the sequence of their sodium-potassium pumps!