Community Corner
Her Summer Job: Manipulating a Mutant Bacteria's Sticky Stalk
Heena Joo, who graduated from Woodbury High School in 2012, is working on a gene no one has researched before, according to the St. Olaf News.
The St. Olaf News tells about the work that St. Olaf College freshman Heena Joo, daughter of Baekkyoo Joo and Ei Kim, is doing:
"The bacterial species they’re studying, Caulobacter crescentus, usually undergoes two phases of its cell cycle. During the first phase, the cells have a flagellum, a tail-like structure that helps them swim and look for food. When the cells enter the second phase, they shed the flagellum and grow a long sticky stalk, which allows them to stick to surfaces.
"The students discovered that deleting the novel gene prevented Caulobacter from growing a stalk during the second phase of its life cycle. This provided the basis for spring researchers Jonathon Peterson ’14 and Margret Bradley ’13 and summer researchers Petra Hahn ‘14 and Heena Joo ’16 to examine the characteristics of the Caulobacter crescentus mutant."
Clarification: Heena Joo wrote in an email that her summer research "has been about trying to reinsert the gene back into C. crescentus and revert the mutant back to its wildtype (normal) phenotype through gene complementation."
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