Kelsey Gallant

Program: Computational and Systems Biology

Current advisor:

Undergraduate university: Spelman College

Research summary
This past summer, I rotated in the lab of Dr. Shin-ichiro Imai where I characterized molecular markers in the dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH) and its role in that mammalian aging.

The Imai Lab has previously demonstrated that mammalian aging is regulated by hypothalamus, especially the dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH) through the Sirt1/Nkx2-1/Ox2r-signaling. Based on previous DNA microarray data, the lab has identified strong markers for Sirt1/Nkx2-1 double-positive neuron in the DMH. Interestingly, recent findings observe that knockdown of these markers in the DMH is associated with an aging phenotype in mice. Some goals of this rotation project are 1) to perform further analysis of hypothalamic transcriptomic data (RNA-Seq) from mice with DMH-specific aging phenotype , 2) to complete qPCR verification of the downstream targets of the selected markers in vitro using cultured hypothalamic neurons from mice with DMH-specific aging phenotype, and 3) to overexpress downstream targets of the selected marker in vitro to determine if it is possible to ameliorate the aging phenotype.

Graduate publications