Liz Maastricht
Presentation Time: 3:30pm – 4:00pm
Abstract
Polycystic Kidney Disease is one of the most common inherited genetic conditions and is often caused by dysfunction of cellular appendages called cilia. My project aims to better understand the requirement for cilia in the excretory system using planarians as a model system. Based on past experiments, we hypothesize that cilia may be important in regulating downstream pathways such as the Hippo signaling pathway. I have performed gene knockdown experiments as well as imaging techniques, such as Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization and TUNEL. These were used to test the genetic interactions between Hippo signaling components and genes required for cilia function.
