Heat Shock Proteins as Indicators of Stress in Echinoderms
Supervisors Maria Byrne (Anatomy and Histology), Murray Thomson.
Many newly expressed cellular proteins need a little help to fold into their correct 3 dimensional structure and they are given this help by specialized proteins that are referred to as molecular chaperones. Heat shock proteins are a major family of molecular chaperones and these proteins were discovered for their ability to help reform the high levels of incorrectly folded proteins that are produced by elevated temperatures.
This kind of stress is pertinent to organisms that live in marine environments with widely fluctuating temperatures and of increasing interest in the face of climate change. This presents an exciting opportunity to work in the field and the lab in studying the cellular effects of environmental stress on marine creatures such as sea urchins and sea stars (an adult and juvenile of each shown below) and you can work in both Maria’s, and my lab.
   
Behaviour, Physiology and Ecology Lab
This is a large and modern shared lab space utilized by academics, postdocs, PhD and honours students and other researchers. Equipment includes a cryostat to cut thin sections of tissue, electrophoresis gear for nucleic acid and protein studies and digital microscopes that can record with stills and video.
  
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