Presenter: Ellie Laufer – Chemistry
Faculty Mentor(s): Zach Stevenson, Patrick Phillips
Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation
Lineage tracking experimentally enables highly precise measurements of fitness effects among different mutant backgrounds. The Phillips lab has pioneered the development of high-throughput lineage marking utilizing barcodes in animal systems. This has been implemented through “Transgenic Arrays Resulting in Diversity of Integrated Sequences” or T.A.D.R.I.S. The T.A.R.D.I.S. method utilizes a unique genetic feature in Caenorhabditis elegans, which is the formation of artificial chromosomes from experimentally injected dsDNA fragments. These fragments form into large megabase circular chromosomes which can be used as a ‘library’ in which to draw sequences from. The T.A.R.D.I.S. process allows us to experimentally input random nucleotides that are passed down through generations into precise, pre-defined, chromosome locations, allowing for the identification of lineages within a population. My research question focuses on measuring the individual contributions to fitness from three separate alleles associated with ivermectin resistance. Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic drug that is toxic to C. elegans and nematode parasites. Ivermectin enters through the cuticle and inhibits neuronal transmission, resulting in death in wildtype worms. Resistance to ivermectin has been associated with several genes, however, I will be focusing on three specific genes: avr-14, avr-15 and glc-1.