Student Co-presenter Names

Nina Prakash, Colleen Moore

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Student Class

2025

Student Affiliation

Junior Research Scholar

First Advisor

Patrick Dolph

First Advisor Department

Department of Biological Sciences

Description

The goal of the project is to determine the role of the Toll protein in retinal degeneration. The Toll protein is a pro-cell death molecule that is also known to be involved in dorsal-ventral patterning during development and innate immunity. This project focuses on the internalization process of Toll, by which it is brought into the cell to mediate cellular functions. Four specific motifs on Toll that are known to be involved in internalization or sorting will be knocked out via CRISPR technology. After screening a population of potential mutant Drosophila flies with a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to determine lines that have a successful knockout, the effect of these knockouts on cellular processes will be observed. Toll processes are generally conserved across all species which either have the Toll protein or Toll-like receptors (TLRs). Therefore, the results of this project could provide more information on how the TLRs contribute to rhodopsin-related diseases in humans, such as retinitis pigmentosa and give insight into causes of neuronal degeneration.

Publication Date

5-2024

Keywords

Drosophila melanogaster, Toll, retinal degeneration, neuronal degeneration, innate immunity, dorsal-ventral patterning, endocytosis

Disciplines

Biological Phenomena, Cell Phenomena, and Immunity | Genetic Processes | Medical Neurobiology

The role of endocytosis in Toll protein function​

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