Ashley Graham Statement of Research Experience I attended UC Merced, the newest UC campus, with the specific goal of obtaining

undergraduate research opportunities scarcer at larger campuses. I began taking research for credit at an immunology lab during the second semester of my junior year. I started out washing glassware, running the autoclave, making PBS, etc. During my second semester of research I maintained cultures of OP9 and OP9DL1 cells for a graduate student studying T cell differentiation and immunosenescence. During my last year with this immunology lab I assisted researchers with tasks including sacrificing animals, processing bone marrow cells, MACS, genotyping, and performing antibody staining for samples prior to performing flow cytometry. This immunology lab ultimately closed due to lack of funding, but I learned a lot about the research process and the culture of academia during my four semesters with the lab. I sought further research opportunities while an undergraduate because I wanted to expose myself to as many fields and methods as possible to prepare me for a career in science. I completed an elective Genome Biology course funded by the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute. The JGI hosts an undergraduate microbial genome analysis program where students contribute to the Genomic Encyclopedia of Archaea and Bacteria (GEBA). The class introduced me to comparative genomics methods through a pre-formatted computational framework provided by the JGI. Under the direction of A. Carolin Frank, PhD, our class annotated the genome of the Atopobium parvulum strain using concepts like sequence homology, genecalling algorithms, ORF analysis, and using tools such as TIGRFAM and PFAM. I also completed two research internships while an undergrad. The first was with the Center for Computational Biology at UC Merced. This was a fun, paid internship experience where I learned about biological molecular modeling within a Linux environment. We began by learning Linux terminal commands, gained familiarity with computational modeling freeware like Gromacs and XMGrace, and explored the steps involved with experimental design and molecular modeling. At the end of the internship we formed groups and completed a team project; my group focused on modeling mutations to the active site of Botulinum neurotoxin with the aim of altering the toxin for use in therapeutic ways. My second research internship was with the Costello Lab, located in the UCSF Brain Tumor Research Center at the Mission Bay campus. This was a pivotal experience for me because I learned a great deal, had a successful project, and was able to contribute to a study that resulted in a publication that has just been accepted to Genome Research. I continued the work of a previous summer student by optimizing PCR amplification of a SNP of interest to perform methylation analysis on primary human tumor samples. I acquired important molecular biology techniques during this internship in addition to making great friends with the members of a very successful research group. My current work involves studying non-coding RNAs in mouse models in the McManus Lab at the UCSF Diabetes Center. I have taken conditional knock out mice for a single microRNA and bred them together to create a knock out of multiple microRNAs from the same family in a single mouse. I have learned about research animal work, conditional gene targeting, institutional policies regarding animal use, primer design, and experimental planning during my time with the McManus Lab. I give presentations in both group lab meetings as well as at RNA journal club meetings in order to communicate the status of the labs mouse colony and stay current with relevant literature. I have given seven presentations during the last year to a diverse group of audiences. My time with my current lab has also honed my communication skills as I work with PIs, post-docs, graduate students, and staff to effectively manage a large colony of transgenic mice. In the future I hope to make use of these opportunities and experiences in pursuing a graduate degree and a career in research. I am interested in animal models, bioinformatics, and drug development.