Transcript’s 1-Sentence Thesis Contest

Written by Alison Mao

Pick up any thesis in the departmental seminar room and thousands of words covering years of hard work from a graduate student, in addition to how they fit into decades of previous research, will unfold in your hands. Even before graduate students reach the stage of writing their thesis, they are likely no stranger to how quickly their word count can rack up while describing their research in a report or conference abstract. However, what if you only had one sentence to summarize your entire research project? Transcripts posed that challenge to students of the Department of Biochemistry, where the winner would receive a gift card!

Check out the winning entry by Minh Sang Huynh from the Moraes Lab and the other amazing submissions by your fellow graduate students!

Elucidating the mechanism of Type XI secretion system in translocating and exporting essential proteins to the surface of Gram negative bacteria for nutrient acquisition and immunity evasion.

–Minh Sang Huynh, Trevor Moraes’ Lab

Distinct conformations of alpha-synuclein protein aggregates can form in the same chemical environment, warranting caution when using pre-formed fibrils for Parkinson’s disease research.

–Raphaella So, Joel Watts’ Lab

To combat multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, I am investigating the metabolically essential zinc ABC transporter systems using X-ray crystallography to determine structures and biophysical techniques to identify metal ligand affinities, with the intention of progressing to in vivo models, to help future development of targeted antimicrobial therapeutics.

–Matthew Giles, Trevor Moraes’ Lab

Pioneering algorithms to model all-atom conformational ensembles of intrinsically disordered proteins and protein complexes.

–Zi Hao Liu, Julie Forman-Kay’s Lab

The protein PPFIA1 might regulate the Hippo signaling pathway through phosphorylation, or actin tension, or an entirely different mechanism–­I’m trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

–Ali Winn, Liliana Attisano’s Lab

In both lab yeast and wine yeast, Rad5 repairs DNA incorrectly when it’s not repairing DNA correctly.

–Kate Jiang, Grant Brown’s Lab

Congratulations to Sang and thank you to all of the contributors for their submissions! Keep an eye out for future contests; we would love to feature your work on Transcripts!