Reeti Gulati | December 28, 2017
As a junior undergraduate student at Caltech, I have now completed two summer undergraduate research fellowships and enjoyed each one thoroughly. As a pre-med student majoring in chemistry, I decided early on that I wanted to conduct research in a field that involves both biology and chemistry. After speaking to multiple professors whose work seemed interesting to me, I decided to throw myself into structural biology and realized there was so much for me to learn.
Through a SURF at Caltech, not only are undergraduate students able to learn various lab techniques and procedures within a specific field, but they are also immersed into the world of research, with independence almost equivalent to that of graduate students. In the most recent summer of 2017, I completed a SURF in the Clemons lab, a structural biology lab that utilizes NMR spectroscopy and x-ray crystallography to determine the structure of various proteins. Prior to the summer, I was introduced to the lab and began working very closely alongside a graduate student. Through one-on-one teaching and observation, I was able to learn lab techniques on an in-depth level ranging from E. coli transformations to cell growth to cell harvesting to protein isolation and purification. I found time within my class schedule during the term to learn these techniques so that by summertime, I would have enough skills to be relatively independent in the lab.
Once summer rolled around, I was able to begin working on my project – to determine the structural conformation of protein Get3, a protein essential to the Get3 pathway within eukaryotes. Tail-anchored (TA) proteins in eukaryotes must be targeted to the endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondrial membranes post-translationally through specialized pathways. In fungi, this transport is conducted by the Guided Entry of Tail-anchored proteins (GET pathway), which involves 6 different proteins, Get1-5 and Sgt2. Currently, two models of the GET pathway exist due to various evidence suggesting that the Get3 protein linked to the TA protein in this pathway exists both as a homodimer and a homotetramer. This project aimed to determine whether the tetrameric form of Get3 when transporting TA proteins in the GET pathway is of biological significance. The goal of this project was to obtain an atomic reconstruction of the tetrameric form of Get3 in complex with TA protein.
Many obstacles arose during this project but that is the beauty of a SURF project – undergraduate students are able to experience the realistic ups and downs of the research world. Some days were a win in the book in terms of progress being made in the project, but some days were full of challenges and progress was even lost as procedures and plans had to be adjusted to accomplish a goal. Throughout this process, I received constant support and guidance by the graduate student and even the rest of the lab, especially as the lab I worked in was a very small, close, friendly group. Today, I am still continuing to work on this project in the Clemons lab, learning more about the field of structural biology everyday. Through research, an undergraduate student at Caltech not only gains an accurate depiction of the daily life of a graduate student, including the rewards and struggles of bringing about slow yet impactful progress in a specific research field, but also is able to gain constant knowledge and encouragement from a community of graduate students and professors.