Page 27 - Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Proceedings 2017-18

School of Science
Division of Life Science

strategy to detect important lncRNAs related to GC by combining RNA sequencing data, mutation and clinical
information from GC patients. The preliminary results showed that lncRNA profile was drastically changed in gastric
cancer comparing with normal tissues.

Study of Blood Cell Development Using Zebrafish Model
Supervisor: WEN Zilong / LIFS
Student: SUN Dajun / SSCI Course: UROP1100, Summer

T lymphocytes are key components of the adaptive immune system and play a central role in cell-mediated immunity.
Although many subsets of T lymphocytes have been identified and their functions have been characterized, whether the
early embryonic development and fate determination of T lymphocytes shares the same mechanism with adults remains
unclear. Based on the fact that zebrafish and vertebrate immunity have many aspects in common (Renshaw and Trede,
2011), we choose zebrafish as an experimental model to study the early development of T lymphocytes. As indicated
previously, the first wave of T cells are all CD4+ cells(Tian et al., 2017), we are eager to know why CD8+ T cells cannot be
generated in the first wave and whether there exists differences in CD4/8 T cells fate choices between fetal and adult T
cell in zebrafish.

Enhancement of Animal Growth Employing Feed Supplemented with Recombinant Growth Hormone
Supervisor: WONG Wan Keung / LIFS
Student: HO Man Wai / BCB Course: UROP1100, Spring

With the foreseeable commercial potential of relaxin, it would worth to explore a more efficient way to produce and
purify the proteins in order to accommodate the future market need. In this project, an intein approach is employed to
achieve our target, in which plasmid constructs (i.e. pGEX2T-GyrA-A and pGEX2T-GyrA-B) were used to transform the E.
coli for the expression of recombinant proteins (i.e. GST-GyrA-A and GST-GyrA-B). Protein expression was induced by
IPTG and the products were undergone GST chromatography for purification. The purified fusion proteins were
incubated under different conditions to see the effectiveness of the cleavage of the A chain and B chain from the intein.

G Proteins and Their Regulators in Cancer Biology
Supervisor: WONG Yung Hou / LIFS
Student: SHIN June Yeol / SSCI Course: UROP1100, Summer

Metastasis is the process in which primary tumours disperse to other unaffected organs. It is estimated that nearly 90%
of cancer deaths result from metastasis (Seyfried & Huysentruyt, 2013 ). With such high lethality linked to the process of
metastasis, it would be highly beneficial if we can discover substances that will inhibit the primary tumours from
dispersing into the circulatory system. It is known that metastasis is regulated by the balance between both metastasis-
promoting and metastasis-suppressing genes. (Yan, Yang & Huang 2013) As a result, we tried to observe if an
introduction of specific ligands into cancer cells could possibly result in an up-regulation of the metastasis-suppressor
genes to prevent metastasis.

Making a Microfluidic Device for Cryo-EM

Supervisor: WU Angela Ruohao / LIFS
Student: CHAN Shek Nga / CBME Course: UROP1100, Summer

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