Deans’ Summer Research Fellowship (DSRF) Story: Ashley Alcantar

Author: Ashley Alcantar

What challenges did you encounter during your research and how did you work through these difficulties?

One of the challenges I faced was harvesting tissue that successfully demonstrated expression of the desired genotype, which was Pax6-CreER;Ai14. To achieve this genotype, I had to breed Pax6;CreER mice with Ai14 mice so the resulting offspring would have the reporter that would then be labeled through immunohistochemistry. There were some times, however, when I would acquire the harvested brains and observe either very weak or a complete lack of signal. This made genotyping necessary so that I didn't spend time on experiments that would not render the desired results. While this added some steps to tissue analysis, it ensured that future results were more consistent with what I expected to observe based on existing literature and my hypothesis.

What sparked your interest in this field?  

As a child, I became interested in the brain as a subject of academic investigation and clinical applications. I became a neuroscience major to fulfill this curiosity and then sought to engage with research in this field, first during my freshman summer and then my junior fall when I joined the Huang Lab to work on a project in their cortical development subgroup. During the academic year and my summer experience, I learned a lot about the applications of what I've seen in my prior coursework, namely the developmental and genetic basis of different cell types in the cortex. Questions arose about the delineation of certain cell types in different anatomical structures, the influence that external factors such as location and cell-cell interactions have on cell identity, and the role of internal factors like transcription factors in determining what projection neurons arise from radial glia cells.

Curious about DSRF?

This project was made possible through the Deans’ Summer Research Fellowship (DSRF)—a unique opportunity for rising juniors and seniors in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences to pursue funded summer research full-time!