Undergraduate student researchers play a large role in The Oliveira Lab at 黑料社 All. Led by Dr. Anderson Oliveira, professor of chemistry at Stern College, and funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF), research in the Lab focuses on the molecular basis of bioluminescence, with an emphasis on, as he explains, 鈥渄iscovering and characterizing novel luciferases and photoproteins from luminous marine and terrestrial organisms.鈥 For the rest of us, that means the students are studying light-emitting organisms, with the goal to better understand, at the molecular level, how these organisms produce light and how they control brightness, color, and stability.
His important research and the students鈥 participation could lead to significant biotechnology applications, including improved detection and imaging for biomedical purposes and diagnostic testing.
The students participating include Eliana Samuels 鈥27SCW, Maya Menashe 鈥27SCW, Emma Shields 鈥26SCW, Elana Kavesh 鈥27SCW, Allison Nagel 鈥26SCW, Atara Razi 鈥26SCW and Tiferet Aharon 鈥27SCW. Their work involves isolating and purifying light-emitting proteins from biological samples and cloning the genes that encode these proteins to produce them reliably in the lab. The students then run experiments that measure how much light is produced and how the signal changes under different conditions, which helps to understand why some systems are brighter or more stable than others. They also contribute to protein engineering efforts, introducing targeted mutations to test how specific changes in the protein鈥檚 sequence can improve performance, as Dr. Oliveira explains, to increase brightness, stability, or shifting the color of the emitted light.
鈥淥ur undergraduate researchers are helping us uncover how nature makes light,鈥 added Dr. Oliveira. 鈥淭heir work directly supports our efforts to understand why some systems are brighter or more stable, and to engineer improved light-emitting proteins for biotechnology, including faster and more sensitive diagnostic assays, bioluminescent reporter tags for tracking biological processes, and next-generation imaging and sensing tools.鈥
