My work in the 2021 CAFE Summer Scholars program was performed in the Vierling Lab in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology department of UMass Amherst. Both of my projects were ongoing projects or developed over the course of my time in the lab, which I joined in the 2020 Spring semester. The CAFE program allowed me to continue my research throughout the summer, which otherwise would not have been possible. Both of my projects focused primarily on the Small Heat Shock Proteins (sHsp) localized to the chloroplast and mitochondria in Arabidopsis Thaliana. sHsps are ATP-independent molecular chaperones responsible in preventing extensive protein denaturation and are found across all three domains of life. My research focused on generating an Hsp25.3, a chloroplast sHsp, knockout mutant using a CRISPR-Cas9 construct as well as investigating the viability of using sHsp-GFP fusion lines to confirm the localization of two sHsps that are thought to dual localize to both chloroplasts and mitochondria. The progress over this summer has been significant and allowed me to build a solid foundation to start my honors thesis on.
