Unraveling the Molecular Basis of Memory

Hi, I’m Ava Northrop, a senior Brain, Behavior, and Cognition major. I’ve been doing a research internship this summer at the University of Utah in one of their neuroscience labs. The lab is studying the molecular basis of memory, and particularly the role of a protein called Arc. The pHd student I’m working with is focused on the part that Arc plays in Alzheimer’s Disease, and I’ve been helping her with various experiments as well as conducting a smaller personal project that will be included in her work and become my senior thesis. 

The experiment I conducted was done to assess the potential interactions and effects of Arc on the microglia cells in the brain. Microglia are essentially the immune cells of the brain, responsible for clearing away things that shouldn’t be there, including neurons that have been infected with tau pathology (a hallmark of Alzheimer’s Disease). We knew that both Arc and microglia have been implicated in the spread of this toxic tau pathology, so we wanted to determine if Arc is having an indirect effect on the microglia. To do this, we sectioned the brains of 16 mice that were either Arc “Knockout” (meaning they don’t have the gene that allows for production of Arc) or Wildtype and took two slices from each. I conducted an immunohistochemistry on these slices to mark microglia cells and tau+ neurons within the hippocampus (the memory center) of the brains. I stained the slices with antibodies that would mark these cells and mounted them onto slides. After the initial procedure I imaged these slides on a laser microscope and took scans of the hippocampus. Then it was analysis time. For each image, I counted the number of total microglia and the number of activated microglia, and then compared these counts across the conditions. I ultimately found no significant differences between the two groups, suggesting that Arc is not having an effect on the microglia. I used a statistical software to do this analysis and create graphs, and put together a slideshow to present at our weekly lab meeting. There’s even a possibility of my data being included in a publication and I would get an acknowledgement, which is pretty cool. 

This internship was such a great opportunity and experience overall. I got to learn so much about the molecular mechanisms of memory as well as many new research techniques. I got some interesting data for my senior thesis, and I got invaluable experience working in a lab that will help set me up for the future. Getting involved in research through this internship also allowed me to explore it as a potential career path and see which aspects of it I’m most interested in pursuing. It was also amazing to contribute even a little bit to such important research on Alzheimer’s Disease. I’m definitely excited coming out of this internship to see what awaits me in the future in this field.