Eastern Student Elizabeth Del Buono Presents at Society for Developmental Biology Annual Meeting

2016 Aug 31

Three biology students from Eastern Connecticut State University presented original research at the 75th Annual Society for Developmental Biology Meeting in Boston, MA, this past August. Mentored by Biology Professor Amy Groth, the students presented multiple projects on an organism called C. elegans, a nematode with a relatively similar genome to humans.

Among the presenters was Elizabeth Del Buono '17, a Biology major from Southington. Del Buono co-presented two projects at the conference: "An investigation of odd-skipped homologs in C. elegans" and "Redundancy of pax family genes in C. elegans development."

"These worms (C. elegans) are model organisms because their genome is about 40 percent similar to the human genome," said Del Buono, "and they have some useful features, such as being transparent and having a fast reproductive rate.

"The project I've been working on involves a family of genes in C. elegans called odd-skipped genes. Little is known about the functions of these genes, but they are related to a gene family in humans that can be linked to developmental diseases like cleft palate and cystic kidney disease, and so we're interested in using C. elegans as a tool to find out more about this gene family."

Del Buono used Eastern's Jean H. Thoresen Scholarship to help fund her research project, as well as a travel grant from the Society of Developmental Biology. "The conference was a fantastic experience where we got to network with other developmental biology students and scientists, present our work and hear many presentations."

"It was a terrific experience for the students," said Groth. "They learned a lot and gained a lot of confidence, and it was great for me to get to see them presenting what they've worked so hard on for a year or more. The possibility of presenting at The Society for Developmental Biology conference served as great motivation for their research - although they were already self-motivated go-getters."