Mia Brown: Making a Difference in the Lab

As children, we all wanted to be firefighters, doctors, presidents, or princesses. If you were anything like me, you just wanted to make a difference in people’s lives for the better. For a while, I thought about being a pediatrician, then a nurse, then an optometrist, then an oncologist, and finally a pharmacist. Once I reached college, I was determined that was the job for me. I proceeded to start my college career as a chemistry major with emphasis in pharmacy. I stuck to my guns about my career choice until I started my break away. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to study abroad due to issues at home, so I decided to do something local.

Over the summer of 2016, I started my internship at the Greenwood Genetic Center at the research department. My supervisor, Dr. Luigi Boccuto, is the assistant director of research looking at autism and Phelan McDermid Syndrome, or PMS. As part of my job, I was to run sequences of patient DNA to check for mutations in the 22q13 gene, which is believed to be affiliated with autism and PMS. The first part of the summer was very simple. I went through training and started performing my responsibilities. 

The later part is when things became more difficult. My grandmother of 73 years old fell down the stairs and broke her femur. My father was deployed to Iraq, and my mother travels for work. My mother, brother, and I worked together to take care of her and my 93 year old great grandmother. To make sure they had food to eat, I would stay all morning to prepare breakfast and lunch for them, then go to the Greenwood Genetic Center. My mom and brother would take care of preparing dinner for them while I was away. Once we had our system in place, it was easy for me to keep going with all my responsibilities at the Greenwood Genetic Center and at home. I learned a lot about time management because of these unforeseen issues. I learned how to set up multiple experiments and run them all quickly and efficiently. I became so efficient, in fact, that I was able to keep up with the other interns even though I was there less often than they were.

One day, my supervisor came to me and gave me a list of patient DNA samples and genes to run. He said he wanted them done in a few days for the physician to be able to treat the patient. As I ran my sequences, I came across something I was not prepared to see. I noticed a mutation in one of our patients that I couldn’t find in the archive. At first I thought I had made a mistake with the sequencing process, so I proceeded to repeat the process and ended with the same results. I started to become a little discouraged and went to my supervisor about the problem. When he saw that the same exact mutation came up twice, he said that this was a real mutation and not a mistake. He proceeded to look into what the mutation was, and found that it was an extremely rare mutation. There is a 1/1,000 chance that patients with PMS will have this specific mutation. 

As I continued to look into the other patient DNA samples, I found the same mutation in another patient. When I reported the findings, my supervisor was able to send off the information to the physician properly treat the patients. This is when I discovered what I really wanted to do with my life.

Finding those rare mutations and giving the physician the information he/she needed to treat the patient gave me a sense of euphoria. I knew that research was what I wanted to do. That moment changed my whole perspective of my future for the better. I no longer felt lost. From that moment, I started looking more and more into the chemistry of what I was doing instead of the biology. I became curious about the proteins being produced by the point mutations in the DNA and asked my supervisor to clarify it for me. He explained that it is still being researched, and it is very difficult to research. 

I started looking more and more into how it is being researched, and it appeared to still be in the development stages. Nothing I saw seemed very concrete, so I started brainstorming my own ideas for fun. I had a fairly straight forward idea and began researching whether it might work or not. When I found no evidence of it ever being done, I started looking into how I would actually do the experiment. After a few weeks of research, I came up with my own hypothesis of testing proteins for their function using cadmium selenide quantum dots as a biological tag.

By the time summer was over, I went to Dr. Dukes in the chemistry department about my idea. He was impressed with the new concept, since his specialty is in nanotechnology, specifically CdSe nanoparticles. I began to continue my research at Lander University with Dr. Dukes testing my theories. Instead of using CdSe, we ended up using gold quantum dots since they were easier to synthesize. I picked a protein that we already knew the function of that did not require other organelles or cells to work. 

The enzyme chosen was alcohol dehydrogenase, or ADH, which is used to break down alcohol in the body. This meant that I could make an enzyme assay using this protein and NAD+ to be reduced to NADH by the protein. The NADH content could be measured in a nanodrop that was generously provided by Dr. Lee in the biology department. In one of my solutions, I had the control setup with just the assay, and the other solution contained the quantum dots. I measured each solution every 5 minutes for 3 hours to see which solution produced the most NADH and at what rate. I found the solution with the quantum dots changed how well the enzyme functioned, which was exactly what I thought would happen.

From having completed my break away, I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I have an analytically creative mind. I can think of new ways to perform tasks that may or may not be more efficient. I learned that I am better at time management than I thought I was. Finally, I learned that even in the lab, not working directly with patients, you can still make a difference.

Graduated from Lander University in the spring of 2017 with a degree in Chemistry. During her time at Lander University, she was a part of the jazz ensemble playing tenor saxophone for all four years. She also tutored at the academic success center her senior year in Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, and Statistics. For her break away, she did an internship at the Greenwood Genetic Center in the research department and continued her research at Lander University. Following graduating, Mia will start her new job as a Chemistry teacher at Greenwood District 50 in the fall of 2017. She plans to continue her education to get her Master’s or Doctoral degree in chemical education to continue teaching and continue her research at a University level.