Kennesaw State University biology professor Brandon Carpenter was inspired to pursue a profession in science due to an undergraduate research experience. With a recent grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), he’ll provide an analogous experience to his students.

Carpenter, an assistant professor of cellular and molecular biology who studies neurodevelopmental disorders and genetic mutations, received a $432,000 grant to proceed research that may help uncover the mechanisms that regulate inheritance of epigenetic states, or “cellular memories,” from one generation to the following. In doing so, his work will make clear how cellular memories are inherited between generations, and what happens to normal development when those memories aren’t inherited properly.

What got me into science, and what I’m really excited by, is inspiring undergraduates, bringing authentic research experiences into the lab for them. This grant will give students the chance to do research and be prepared for the following step of their careers.”

Brandon Carpenter, assistant professor of cellular and molecular biology, Kennesaw State University

A lot of the money will go toward funding a gaggle of undergraduate and graduate researchers in his lab, where they use a microscopic nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), that shares half its genes with humans, to check the mechanisms that underlie neurological disorders. Attributable to the short life span and ease of manipulating nematodes, student researchers can easily execute experiments and generate publishable data, often inside a single semester.

“We are able to take out a C. elegans gene and put in a human version of that gene and it may rescue that gene, and the worm can function very similarly to the best way it did when it had its normal gene,” Carpenter said. “We’re capable of study basic mechanisms within the worm and it’s directly relevant to what’s happening in humans.”

He said the general goal of his research is to check how inappropriate inheritance of epigenetic states affects normal tissue development and performance. Since the enzymes that Carpenter studies that regulate epigenetic inheritance are conserved in humans, his work will provide insight into how medical professionals might intervene to treat patients with these disorders.

“By studying how these cellular memories activate the mistaken way and affect tissues, we will start to grasp the mechanisms of how these patients which have mutations in these same enzymes that regulate the cellular memory have the phenotypes they do,” he said.

Carpenter said he hopes to open his laboratory and research to more students, offering similar research experiences to those that directed him toward his profession as a professor and researcher.

“When you may support a student financially so that they can show up in your lab and receives a commission, it helps alleviate other things in life that they are coping with, and it broadens the online of various kinds of students with different life situations that may take part in research experiences,” he said.

Source:

Kennesaw State University