Though I have broad interests in the field of molecular biology and genetics, I am currently working on further characterizing the role of lengsin in the zebrafish ocular lens. Lengsin, which is expressed in the lens of many vertebrates, including humans, plays a still undefined function in lens development. To examine the function of lengsin in the zebrafish lens, I am using morpholinos to knockdown lengsin expression during lens development. I am also trying to characterize the expression of the lengsin protein using a polyclonal antisera generated against a lengsin-bacterial fusion protein. I am currently carrying out a cloning experiment in order to potentially identify alternative transcripts of the lengsin gene. While I am just beginning my research here at Notre Dame, I am very interested in the work being carried out here and am eager to become more familiar with it and more involved
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| Figure 1. Immunohistological analysis of actin in larval zebrafish eyes. The left panel shows actin staining in a wild-type eye, while the right panel shows actin staining in an eye that lacks lengsin expression due to the presence of the morpholino. |
