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Over the summer of 2026, I worked as a research assistant in the Ross Lab of the department of microbiology and immunology at Dartmouth's Geisel school of medicine. In this role, I worked with anaerobic bacteria of the genus Bacteroides studying the type 6 secretion system (T6SS), integrative and conjugative mobile elements (ICE), and bacterial metabolism through the use of genetics and molecular biology techniques.
In this experience, I was able to enhance my skills in a wide variety of wetlab applications. I worked on projects mapping the insertion patterns of the rAID ICE (which confer orphan immunity from T6S effectors) elements and determining the impact different insertion sites had on bacterial growth and competitiveness.
I was also able to create a bacterial complement strain of the TraN gene (a gene necessary for the formation of the Bacteroides T6SS membrane complex), which was previously deleted from its original operon, by reinserting it elsewhere in the genome. This allows the lab to confirm previous results about the importance of the TraN gene product's function as they can prove that previous results were not due to a polar effect on the Tra operon.
In addition to this, I developed a defined minimal media for Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and mapped its growth patterns when exposed to varying levels of Tryptophan and Indole. Finally, I also spent time working on a review covering the Bacteroides T6SS, something I will continue to work on past the summer.
All of these projects gave me skills in project development, cloning, bacterial mating procedures, anaerobic chamber technique, plasmid and primer design, PCR (colony PCR, AP-PCR, and genomic PCR), genome analysis, and data analysis using R. This experience has left me excited to continue to pursue research in the genetics field.