Starting my Summer Research at Ole Miss

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Starting my Summer Research at Ole Miss

At the time of this writing, it is May 2025 and I have just moved into my apartment at Ole Miss, the affectionate nickname of the University of Mississippi. I was selected to participate in a summer REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program working for Dr. Randy Wadkins. His bio and research summary can be found on the previous link. 

Dr. Wadkins and I met a couple days ago over lunch and we talked about politics, science and other subjects. After researching the man for several months, it was quite an experience to finally meet him in person, as if the picture in his biography suddenly came to life and began talking about all the science I had merely read about from my computer screen. He was much more relaxed in person than I thought he would be, which I thought was a pleasant surprise. Too many times, accomplished scientists come across as pretentious or that they're condescending to lower planes of intellect when they begin to speak to plebians such as myself. Dr. Wadkins, however, was not like that at our conversation. He was very kind and had a teacher's heart for sure. 

Now, I have only barely started my assigned research project, but I am about to make up some stock solutions of pH buffer when I'm done writing this post. But what does Dr. Wadkins have me working on, you ask?

The Research Topic

If you are familiar with DNA, you may know that it forms a double-helix shape in vivo. However, many times, and specifically at the site of promoters for specific genes (I'll get into that in a later post), DNA can form secondary structures with often four strands interacting at once. These usually happen in Guanosine-rich (G-rich) regions of a DNA sequence or Adenosine-rich (A-rich) regions of DNA. But Thymine-rich (T-rich) regions remain largely unstudied.

Specifically, our research topic deals with what happens when you throw a horrendously toxic heavy metal (A.K.A mercury) into a bunch of T-rich DNA. Dr. Wadkins' past research has suggested that heavy metals like mercury actually intercalate (insert between) the base pairings of a DNA molecule and this intercalation disrupts the delicate interactions between the bases in a double helix such that it induces a strange secondary structure in the T-rich DNA. You've probably heard of mercury and lead poisoning your whole life. Well, what appears to be happening is that the metal actually changes the structure of your DNA. Sounds like a fun time.

So that is where I am at right now. About to go make toxic mercury solutions and pH buffers before our DNA sequences arrive and we actually start the experiment. 

I think in a future post, I'll talk about the potential applications of this heavy metal/DNA research and maybe expand more upon the theory behind what is happening, but I think this is enough for now since I have just started to embark on this journey. 

Thank you for reading and I'll see you next time!


Where thoughts orbit stars and dreams power suns....

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