October 23, 2015
Building expression constructs for adhesion G protein-coupled receptor 116
More than one million Americans are diagnosed with cancer each year. Cancer encompasses a group of over 100 diseases, all of which are characterized by the abnormal growth of cells. These cells have the potential to invade neighboring cells, allowing the cancer to spread throughout the body and damage the body further. In some patients with blood cancer, mutations are shown to arise in a gene encoding the adhesion G protein-coupled receptor 116 (GPR116), resulting in irregularly signaling of the protein. In order to study this receptor and its signaling pathway, the full length gene must first be expressed and imaged in cells. My independent project this summer at the University of Oxford in England was to build an expression construct for GPR116 with N-terminal and C-terminal tags, allowing for the visualization and manipulation of the protein through techniques such as Western blot, flow cytometry, and polymerase chain reaction.
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