Research Symposium

BIO

I am a first-year student majoring in Biology here at Florida State University. I am honored to be a member of FSU’s Honors Program and Presidential Scholars Program. My passions include genetics, immunology, and microbiology. In pursuing this, I proved the necessity of mitochondrial membrane translocases in the progeny production of Caenorhabditis elegans with the guidance of Dr. Webster through this research. After graduation, I envision having a career in biological research or computation, adding to the world's knowledge through experimentation and data analysis.

Mitochondrial membrane translocases are required for progeny production in C. elegans

Abstract

Genetically identical Caenorhabditis elegans roundworms naturally differ in the number of progeny that they produce, and these differences are correlated with gene expression differences in conserved genes involved in protein transport through the inner and outer mitochondrial membranes. This experiment strives to test whether two of these genes, tomm-20 and timm-17B.1, causally affect brood size in Caenorhabditis elegans, by knocking them down at the mRNA level using RNA interference (RNAi). These genes have human orthologs, allowing my results to be relevant to human conditions. RNAi knockdown of the target genes as well as positive and negative controls was performed on groups of C. elegans. Then progeny numbers were counted, totaled, and compared. My results have indicated a relationship between brood size and the knockdown of the genes tomm-20 and timm-17B.1,with both genes exhibiting reduced brood size compared to a control. The effect of tomm-20 knockdown was particularly strong, indicating that the inhibition of the outer mitochondrial membrane translocase has drastic effects on the ability of C. elegans to produce a normal brood size. Knockdown of eef-1A.2 (a known positive control gene) exhibited lower numbers of progeny compared to both tomm-20 and timm-17B.1, suggesting that progeny production is not inhibited to the same degree in these translocase related genes. Because both timm-17B.1 and tomm-20 reduced brood size it can be ascertained that translocase of the outer and inner membrane of the mitochondria plays a role in maximizing normal gamete production and fertilization.

Keywords: C. elegans Mitochondrial Membrane Translocases