An impressive cohort of 12 Upper School science students addressed the fields of genetics and molecular biology in a series of informative genetics research presentations in the Oakwood Room on May 29. Dr. Susan Zusman, who guided the students in their yearlong research, provided a brief welcome and introduction to the program, which was attended by students, parents, faculty and administrators.
“I am so proud of how hard the students worked, what they accomplished and how they explained their results to the Wardlaw+Hartridge community,” Dr. Zusman said. “I am so thrilled to help train these students to potentially become future scientists, researchers and physicians. The results they obtained are quite significant.”
Students worked on an independent genetic research project using drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) in collaboration with active researchers at Princeton University. Having spent many hours performing high level research, the students were eager to share their work and findings.
Twelve students in the genetics research program shared presentations: Hannah Torres ’26, Manat Grewal ‘27, Chiara Baldi ‘26, Nijiany Genao ’26 and Nitya Sahni ’26 were able to show that a highly conserved signaling pathway (the ras/mekpathway) plays an important role in locomotion and social interactions in drosophila. These results may reflect some of the neurological defects observed in humans with the same mutations. Anya Gupta ’27, Olivia Taylor ’27 and Coco Lee ’27 identified three new genes needed for normal trachea development in drosophila and Anjali Shankar ’26 worked on the development of a technique to study the effects of hypoxia (low oxygen) in drosophila trachea.
Anisa Sidhu ‘27, Sophie DeLaurentiis ’27 and Anushka Patchigolla ’27 were able to show qualitatively and quantitatively that mutations in the foi and tre genes modify the conserved hedgehog signaling pathway. The quantitative techniques used mathematical methods developed by Anushka. Together their data, also supported by previous experiments done at W+H, strongly suggests that these two genes and the proteins they encode are potential new members of the hedgehog signaling pathway. Anushka will further examine the role these genes play in the hedgehog pathway this summer in a lab at Texas Tech.
“All of the researchers produced very exciting results, which can now be shared with their research mentors at Princeton University,” Dr. Zusman said.