So I am planning on doing my spring elective in a research lab, as well as spending the summer there. The school offers 35 or so research fellowships for summer research projects done by MS1s, and hopefully I can get one. After several years of being anti-research, I have decided to reverse my position in the interest of optimizing my chances of matching in a residency.
The PI (principal investigator) I'm going to work with does research on phospholipids and cardiac reperfusion injury. Phospholipids are the primary component of cell membranes. Those found in cardiac muscle cells are suscepible to oxidative damage from halogens like those found in white blood cells. What we'll be studying is the role that the products from these reactions play in atherosclerosis and in reperfusion injury. When the heart or any other tissue is ischemic for a period of time and oxygen flow is finally restored, the incoming oxygen damages the tissues more than the original ischemic insult. Oxygen alone is not responible for the additional damage, but other reactive chemical species as well. It is these other reactive species that we'll be studying, particularly halogenated aldehydes. The image at the top is of a plasmalogen, a phospholipid susceptible to chemical alteration by reactive halogens
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