Presenter(s): Ryan Sayegh
Faculty Mentor(s): Annie Zemper & Janelle Stevenson
Poster 9
Session: Sciences
The colon is a vital organ for digestion. Its inner epithelial lining has tubular invaginations known as colonic crypts. These crypts contribute to a dynamic system containing stem cells necessary for colonic repair and maintenance (Barker et al. 2014). Disruption of the colonic crypt system is a symptom of diseases like Irritable Bowel Disease, colitis, and colorectal cancer. The protein EGFR plays an important role in the cell proliferation necessary for maintaining homeostasis within the colon. Leucine-rich repeats and immunoglobulin like domains 1 (Lrig1) is a protein that plays an antagonizing role to Egfr (Wang et al. 2013). LRIG3, a homolog of LRIG1 was shown to positively regulate EGFR in a cell culture model (Rafidi et al. 2013). However, its role in the colon remains unknown. I hypothesize that mice lacking Lrig3 (Lrig3-/-) will have smaller epithelial tissue areas with lower expression of Egfr. I used immunofluorescence to analyze the expression of Egfr in the absence of Lrig3 and found no difference compared to control mice. I then analyzed colonic epithelial area using Hematoxylin and Eosin staining and found that Lrig3- /- mice had a larger area of epithelial tissue when compared to control mice. These data show that Lrig3 may be playing a different role in the Egfr pathway than what other models would suggest.