Contact information
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1319
elainet_@hotmail.com or tam@msu.edu

Education
BSc. Honours Biochemistry (1999 – present)
University of Waterloo, Canada

Research

With Cora, I am preparing plasmid samples for microarray printing of human arrays. This means I get to practice my pipetting skills, since this involves the PCR amplification of the plasmids, checking the amplification by gel electrophoresis, filtering and re-suspending the PCR product, and condensing the 96-well plates into 384-well plates for printing. There is also a final check on every tenth re-suspended plate. In total there are 111 plates for the human set. During the summer months, a rat set will also be prepared.

I am also working under the supervision of Darrell for various projects all of which deal with Cyp1a1 genes and how TCDD treatment will affect their expression. While working with Darrell, I have been able to have hands on experience with reverse transcriptions, real-time PCR, ligation reactions/transformations, growing and treating MCF-7 cells, and harvesting RNA from tissue and cells. During my summer months here, I may also be able to do some work with mice.