School of Science Division of Life Science 30 Application of Chinese Medicine in Cosmetics Supervisor: TSIM Karl Wah Keung / LIFS Student: SIN Zhen Qi / BIBU Course: UROP 1000, Summer Skin whitening is a common cosmetic procedure that emerged as a global trend, primarily driven by the influence of cultural and societal factors. Edible Bird’s Nest (also known as 燕窩), a traditional Chinese medicine, has been identified to possess beneficial skin effects due to its bioactive components, such as its proteins and peptides. However, its application methods are considered limited in terms of its lack of stability and skin permeability. As such, this study proposes a methodology that will evaluate the use of gold nanoparticles and chitosan nanoparticles as a delivery system for bird’s nest peptides to enhance skin whitening. The objectives are to develop and characterize the nanoparticle formulations, evaluate their invitro effects on melanogenesis in mouse B16 melanoma cells, and assess the potential of these systems for skin whitening applications via the ability of the peptide-loaded nanoparticles to significantly reduce the melanin content. The Application of Big Data Technologies in Precision Cancer Medicine Supervisor: WANG Jiguang / LIFS Student: XIE Zequan / COSC Course: UROP 1000, Summer Estimating cell type fractions of tissues is a challenging yet crucial task. With single-cell protein datasets as the reference, it is feasible to predict cell type fractions based on protein abundance levels of tissues. scpDeconv is a prominent algorithm designed for this purpose. The initial successful implementation of the published model has paved the way for ongoing iterative improvements and model enhancements. By adding more layers and improving the sample mix-up strategy, the updated model showed improved performance without requiring too much additional computational resources. We anticipate that the enhanced model can be useful for analyzing bulk clinical proteomics datasets to identify potential prognostic features related to cell type. Mechanistic Investigation of Mitochondrial Quality Control Supervisor: WANG Lan / LIFS Student: CHIU Chung Wah / BIOT Course: UROP 1100, Fall UROP 2100, Spring ATAD1 is a mammalian mitochondrial protein maintaining proteome homeostasis on the outer mitochondrial membrane. It extracts membrane protein mis-localize to mitochondria, removes precursor protein stuck in the mitochondrial protein translocase channel during protein import stress, mediates apoptosis and regulates synaptic plasticity. Understanding the functionality of ATAD1 provides essential insights into the maintenance of overall health of cells. Recently, we preliminary found a close relationship between ATAD1 and cellular differentiation in mammalian cell lines. In this study, we are in progress of verification of the relationship, as well as seeking to unrevealed its underlying mechanism by purifying mitochondria for the identification of ATAD1 substrate.
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