Through the 2016 University of Cincinnati Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship

Neurology (SURF-Neuro) program, I was given the opportunity to work full-time in the Gross
lab at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center for ten weeks during the summer. Working
with my mentor, Dr. Durgesh Tiwari, I was able to greatly expand upon what I learned during my
time in the RaMP program in Dr. Gross lab.
I was able to actively play a role in aiding Dr. Tiwari with optimizing our Fluoro-Jade
B and immunohistochemistry stains. Once these techniques were optimized, I was given the
responsibility of using them to collect real, valuable data that will be used in the project. The
most interesting result of our data, that I had the privilege of being the first to observe, was the
significant decrease in neurodegeneration in the hippocampi of post-seizural mouse brains
pretreated with miR-218 antaomir compared to brains pretreated with a scrambled negative
control. These results would seem to suggest that miR-218 may possibly provide a
neuroprotective effect in temporal lobe epilepsy seizure models in mice. The data corresponding
to this observation can be seen in the image above.
I learned much more than just histological stains over the summer, though. I also was
responsible for regularly weighing and caring for two colonies of mice, sectioning mouse brains
using a cryostat, and taking care of laboratory maintenance as well as clean room maintenance
every other week.
In addition to learning methods I learned a great deal about the project and concepts in
neurology by reading and presenting a scientific journal article, attending journal clubs,
researching various articles in order to create more effective protocols, and asking questions

while doing lab work. Additionally, I learned how to create an effective research poster and
present it in front of judges at the end of the program.
I am very glad that I was selected to take part in this program and working in the Gross
lab over the summer. I will be continuing my work in Dr. Gross lab with Dr. Tiwari during my
school year in order to follow up on the work that I did during the summer. Dr. Tiwari and I will
be performing more histological stains in order to collect enough quantitative data on
immunohistochemical analyses on PBS-injected versus kainic acid-injected mouse brains and
FJB stains in order to make a scientifically valid conclusion. Furthermore, we will be testing the
effects of miR-218 on Kv4.2 channel protein expression via immunohistochemical analysis.