Romo's Summer Research at UAMS

Ricardo Romo

During the summer I had the privilege to participate on a research project with Dr. Abdel Bachri with the partnership of Dr. Rupak Puthak and  Dr. Martin Hauer Jensen.  In our research we desired to understand how Gamma tocotrinol, a drug, mitigates the stresses of microgravity and gamma radiation on chromosomes. Chromosomal aberrations are serious abnormalities that arise from stresses of radiation and can cause circulatory system diseases.  Astronauts and cancer patients that were exposed to radiation contribute a good portion of our population with these dilemmas. With my undergraduate partners Daryll Webb and Cullen Shaffer, we spent a good amount of time with familiarizing ourselves with similar published articles. We experimented with human umbilical vein endothelial cells (huvec) for they are an intermediate resistant cell line against radiation.  Dr. Bachri had us practice all the basic protocols, and stressed how fundamental it was to achieve maximum proliferation, and to prevent contamination in the lab. Basic procedures like Giemsa staining, trypsinizing cells, and cell counting were essentially the methods that we performed during the whole summer. As an honors student it was an amazing experience finding out the different insights into how research is integrated and directed. I find it to be very beneficial to learn and work somewhere different. It brings out a self-rewarding feeling to use this experience as a resume builder for grad school where I hopefully could begin next year.