2019 – Page 3 – Undergraduate Research Symposium Abstracts

Empathy in Fiction as Shown Through the Second Person Point-of-View

Presenter(s): Madeline Walters

Faculty Mentor(s): Mark Hennion

Oral Session 2 DL

My project explores the various methods authors use to tell stories in the second person point of view, and how these methods portray a powerful empathetic effect in the reader. This particular point of view is not often used in traditional narratives. Rather than using I, he, she, or we, some authors choose to use “you” in a stylistic manner. In analyzing multiple stories, I’ve found many different methods of using the second person in various stories over more than one genre. I’ve analyzed these methods in order to answer this question: How is the second person point of view told to make the readers more empathetic towards different narratives? As a writer myself, my goal is to share the art of reading and writing stories that portray an in-depth experience of emotion.

“The Perfect Hybrid”: Art, Architecture, and Advertising in Solange’s Metatronia (Metatron’s Cube)

Presenter(s): Claren Walker

Faculty Mentor(s): Emily Scott & Gretchen Soderlund

Poster 149

Session: Social Sciences & Humanities

In April 2018, multidisciplinary artist and musician Solange Ferguson (neé Knowles) debuted a collaborative performance piece titled Metatronia (Metatron’s Cube) at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Although the piece centers around a choreographed dance performance within a sculptural white cube structure, Metatronia’s ultimate manifestation is the short video that has been widely circulated on the internet and social media. While Solange’s sculptural white cube both relies upon and disrupts the canons of modern architecture and minimalist art, it also occupies a place in the landscape of brand advertising. Critically, the video was executed “in partnership” with the Japanese fast fashion corporation Uniqlo (whose clothes the dancers wear) and produced by their advertising agency of record, Droga5 UK. By critically examining media coverage of the project and bringing it into dialogue with historical and contemporary art, architectural, and media scholarship, this research explores the tension in Metatronia (and other branded cultural phenomena like it) between its status as a work of art for public benefit and its function as a media vehicle to generate capital for corporate interest. Metatronia’s effectiveness as an advertisement depends on the veiling of its very function as one: with brand involvement masked under smooth rhetorics of “partnership,” the piece can exist comfortably in high art contexts while still elevating a fast fashion company. Metatronia exists at a nebulous–but commercially successful–intersection of art, architecture, and advertisement. More broadly, this case study reveals the complex dynamics and contradictions of contemporary cultural production under late neoliberal capitalism.

Investigation of Riboswitch Structure and Dynamics Using Fluorescent Spectroscopy

Presenter(s): Michael Veirs

Faculty Mentor(s): Julia Widom

Poster 23

Session: Sciences

Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) is a photophysical phenomenon in which the excitation of a donor fluorophore results in fluorescent emission from an acceptor fluorophore when the two molecules are in close proximity. Using a FRET system, we intend to investigate the folding dynamics of the preQ1 riboswitch, which is an RNA species that regulates gene expression in bacteria. We used a double-stranded DNA system and the fluorescent adenine analog 2-aminopurine (2AP) to determine fluorescent molecules that can be used as FRET acceptors for 2AP. We found mFluor violet 450 and Atto390 to be appropriate acceptor fluorophores for use in more complex RNA systems. We also found that the riboswitch has a tendency to dimerize under our experimental conditions. To investigate this process, we ran our RNA samples using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. We determined protocols for minimizing dimerization of our RNA by varying the procedure by which the construct was annealed and stored. These results lay the foundation for using FRET to study the folding of this riboswitch and, by extension, the mechanism by which it regulates gene expression.

Reconceptualizing Feminist Utopias: Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time and Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone

Presenter(s): Bethan Tyler

Faculty Mentor(s): Elizabeth Raisanen

Oral Session 3 O

Theories of feminist utopia tend to focus on its presence within science/speculative fiction, upholding works like Marge Piercy’s 1976 novel Woman on the Edge of Time as exemplars of the genre. Literary critics typically designate this novel’s vision of the future, the community of Mattapoisett, as a source of radical, mobilizing inspiration for feminists. I will argue against this reading by attesting that Mattapoisett presents a regressive model of feminism in its failure to permit women the choice of (traditional) maternity and, moreover, does not sufficiently distance itself from that which is condemned in the novel’s dystopian present – the stripping of women’s reproductive agency. Mattapoisett thus fails to fulfill half of Sally Miller Gearhart’s essential criteria for the identification of feminist utopia. By contrast, I argue that Margaret Drabble’s 1965 novel, The Millstone, presents a radical vision of maternity, as divorced from patriarchy, that aligns with threads of the feminist movement yet to come at the time of its publication, and that this, under Gearhart’s framework, strongly suggests the presence of a feminist utopia. This is striking in that the novel is categorized as a work of realism, rather than science fiction. By revealing the vision of feminism within a speculative fiction novel to be retrograde in comparison with that of a realistic novel, I argue that feminism unyokes realism from the present, thus collapsing boundaries between genres, and making a case for the study of the feminist utopia in realms beyond science fiction.

Chemoreceptor Zinc-Binding Protein Domains Sense Hypochlorous Acid

Presenter(s): Dan Tudorica

Faculty Mentor(s): Arden Perkins

Oral Session 3 M

The Chemoreceptor Zinc-Binding domain (CZB) is a protein module common in host-associated bacteria that seems to regulate bacterial chemoreceptors that control motility. The ligand these protein domains sense remains uncertain, however CZB domains contain a cysteine that binds to zinc, a chemical moiety that is known to be reactive with bleach (HOCl). Thus, my hypothesis is that CZBs are responsible for sensing HOCl, which is a prevalent antibacterial agent synthesized by human neutrophils to combat infections. Using the fluorescence of a sample of purified CZB, my data indicate the protein’s structure changes in response to physiologically-relevant concentrations of HOCl, consistent with a mechanism for signal transduction. Furthermore, by examining the circular dichroism spectrum of CZB under increasing concentrations of HOCl, I identified this structural change as a loss of alpha-helicity.

I also examined the hardiness of CZB-possessing bacteria in vivo in the presence of varying concentrations of HOCl. I found that the bacterial pathogens Salmonella and Helicobacter pylori, which possess CZB-regulated chemoreceptors, can tolerate acute treatments of HOCl and remain motile, and were more resistant than Escherichia coli, which has a CZB-regulated diguanylate cyclase but lacks a CZB-regulated chemoreceptor. E. coli, however, proved to be more tolerant of surviving high levels of HOCl over 6-12 hours. In summary, my research suggests CZB domains have the surprising capability to sense HOCl, the strongest oxidant generated by the human immune system, and that bacteria that colonize humans may use these sensors for different purposes in their colonization strategies.

Connexins are not responsible for specification of the electrical synapse

Presenter(s): Elisa Trujillo

Faculty Mentor(s): Adam Miller & Abagael Lasseigne

Poster 56

Session: Sciences

In order to initiate synaptogenesis two cells must come together and undergo intracellular communication; both can be done through a protein with cell adhesive properties. At chemical synapses, extracellular cell adhesion molecules allow two neurons to communicate in order to recruit compatible pre- and postsynaptic machinery. By contrast little is known about electrical synapses, where gap junction channels physically couple neurons. Transmembrane gap junction proteins at the electrical synapse, Connexins, have adhesive properties. We hypothesized that Connexins are required to initiate electrical synapse formation. To investigate this we created Connexin mutant animals and assessed whether or not a highly stereotyped electrical circuit containing Mauthner neurons was still morphologically normal. We used the localization of the required scaffolding protein, Tjp1b, as an indicator for electrical synapse specification. Connexin proteins are co-dependent; without one Connexin the other is unable to localize to the synapse. I tested the requirement of the pre- and postsynaptically required Connexin proteins for normal neuron morphology and Tjp1b localization by selecting fish with green fluorescent protein (GFP) positive Mauthner neurons and immunostaining zebrafish larvae for Tjp1b, and GFP in animals with non-functional Connexin proteins. Despite the loss of Connexins, Tjp1b still localized at the potential electrical synapse site and the morphology of the Mauthner neuron remained normal. Thus, Connexins do not appear to be the proteins responsible for electrical synapse initiation. My future work will aim to identify the protein with cell adhesion properties necessary for electrical synaptogenesis.

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