Ifediora Nwakuche
MIT Department: Biology
Faculty Mentor: Prof. Richard Young
Research Supervisor: Shannon Moreno, Kalon Overholt
Undergraduate Institution: North Carolina Central University
Hometown: Knightdale, North Carolina
Website: LinkedIn
Biography
Ifediora Nwakuche is a sophomore undergraduate chemistry student at North Carolina Central University. He is passionate about science and the different ways in which research contributes to medicine. Ifediora has aspirations to pursue a higher degree, specifically an MD/PhD at the intersection of research and patient care; he wishes to be at the forefront of medicine while conducting research that he can apply to his work as a physician. Throughout his undergraduate journey, Ifediora has demonstrated expertise in various factors of research, utilizing his prior experiences in similar settings to conduct projects at the collegiate level. To date, Ifediora has conducted and presented two separate research projects both varying in respective areas of chemistry. His first project was in high school through the American Chemical Society’s “Project S.E.E.D.” program on the synthetic organic side of chemistry; his second project was at his home institution in the Christian lab, further on the analytical side of chemistry. His most recent project will have him step further into the realm of biochemistry to research protein mobility dynamics.
Abstract
Probing the interplay of proteolethargy with enzymes involved in redox homeostasis
Ifediora Nwakuche1, Shannon Moreno2, Kalon Overholt2, Jesse Platt1,3*, Alessandra Dall’Agnese2, Ming Zheng2, Tony Lee2 and Richard Young2
1Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, North Carolina Central University
2Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research
3Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
Chronic metabolic diseases, such as Type II diabetes have been found at the center of pathogenic research; as they effect up to one third of US population. Disorders such as diabetes are demonstrated in literature to stem from various cellular dysfunctions; recent evidence from the Young lab suggests that chronic pathogenic signaling has a correlation with altering condensate dynamics. Researchers in the Young lab proposed that alterations in condensate dynamics could be responsible for delayed protein movement, coining the term “proteolethargy”; which is the slowed or reduced mobility proteins inside of cells. In addition to altered dynamics emerging research has pointed to oxidative stress as a possible factor in phenotypes that exhibit slower protein movement. It is proposed this could be a result of ROS proteins containing surface exposed cysteines which are sensitive to oxidative stress; forming disulfide bonds as a result. Further study into the dynamics of redox proteins can possibly answer more questions on the different causes of proteolethargy. This project involves creating a vector in which a gene encoding for a redox protein of interest can be used. The purpose of this study to validate whether or not oxidative stress is a factor of proteolethargy and if proteins with surface exposed cysteines exhibit physicochemical differences as a result of oxidative stress. In cases where altered redox homeostasis can induce proteolethragy, it can be inferred that treatments that target the surface exposed cysteines may aid in combatting proteolethargy.
