URCAD Selfie Contest Winners: Shivam Patel and Mukta Sangar

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 14:54:15 -0400

Forget about the poster, police doge extraordinaire Chip was in the House at URCAD '25. URA Scholars and Biology majors Shivam and Muktar got the "OMG it's Chip!" vote and won $50 to the UMBC Bookstore!

Investigating The Role Of The Gene, Rho1 On The Innate Immune Response In Drosophila Melanogaster

Mukta Sangar, Shivam Patel
Mentor: Dr. Jeff Leips, Biological Sciences

Immunosenescence, the decline in immune function with age is a hallmark of aging but varies among individuals. This variation has a genetic basis but the genes involved are unknown. A recent genome-wide association study identified Rho1 as a candidate gene contributing to the variation of immune function with age. We investigated the role of Rho1 on bacterial clearance at young and old ages using Drosophila melanogaster. We used the GAL4-UAS system to knock down the expression of Rho1 in hemocytes of male and female flies and tested the effect of reduced expression on the ability of flies to clear bacterial infection at 1 and 5 weeks of age. Overall, older flies had reduced ability to clear infection compared with younger flies and males were significantly better at clearing infection than females. The effect of reduced expression of Rho1 on clearance ability depended on sex. Reduced Rho1 expression decreased the ability of males to clear infection but had no significant effect on clearance ability in females. Future work focused on understanding how Rho1 influences the innate immune response and why it has sex specific effects will provide new avenues for improving the immune function and the health span of the elderly.

This work was funded, in part, through an Undergraduate Research Award from the UMBC Division of Undergraduate Academic Affairs.

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