Opportunity Details

Details about the opportunity you selected and the mentor are shown below. It is your responsibility to contact the mentor to discuss collaborating with them this summer. If your mentor invites you to submit an application, you can access that from the front page of this site. Upon completion of the application, it will be sent to the mentor for approval before being passed on to the Summer Scholar Selection Committee, which will make the decisions.

Faculty Information
	Sergei Mirkin
	sergei.mirkin@tufts.edu
	Professor
	P: (617) 627-4794
Address:
	Biology, Barnum 101B
	Medford , MA 02155

Opportunity:
	DNA repeats and human disease
Summary:
	Uncontrollable expansions of trinucleotide repeats lead to more than a dozen human neurological disorders, including Fragile X mental retardation, Huntington’s disease, myotonic dystrophy, and Friedreich’s ataxia. Our lab pursues a hypothesis that these expansions are caused by replication errors. We are currently unraveling the fine mechanisms of repeat expansions in yeast and mammalian experimental systems.
Contact Via:
	E-mail
What is the timeframe for this research opportunity?
	May to August
Prerequisities for students?
	Genetics Bio 41 Molecular Biology Bio 105
Responsibilities for students?
	Isolate DNA and RNA samples. Analyze repeat expansions using PCR analysis. Cloning and sequencing of various DNA repeats. Creating selection systems for repeat expansions.