{"id":105480,"date":"2015-11-16T08:07:43","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T13:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=105480"},"modified":"2015-12-09T11:55:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T16:55:11","slug":"an-undergrad-discovers-some-sticky-dna-and-a-new-vocation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2015\/11\/an-undergrad-discovers-some-sticky-dna-and-a-new-vocation\/","title":{"rendered":"An Undergrad Discovers Some Sticky DNA \u2013 and a New Vocation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<\/a>
Brendan Smalec ’16 (CLAS)(SFA) and Professor Rachel O’Neill discuss some of the intricacies of Smalec’s research. (Sean Flynn\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brendan Smalec ’16 (CLAS)(SFA) wanted to be a doctor. The Cheshire native had just started at UConn and was already in the Honors Program, with a double major in art history and molecular and cell biology, but he thought a stint working in a research lab would be good experience. So he wrote up a proposal to study cancer in mice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m too embarrassed to even look at it now,\u201d Smalec cringes. In hindsight, he thinks it was probably simplistic or ridiculous. But the Holster Scholar<\/a> program judges thought it was good enough to award him funding, and assigned him to work in UConn genomicist Rachel O\u2019Neill\u2019s lab.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, put Smalec to work looking at Harderian gland adenocarcinomas in mice. Adenocarcinoma is the technical term for cancer that starts in gland tissue. People commonly get adenocarcinomas in the breast, lungs, prostate, and colon. The inbred mice in O\u2019Neill\u2019s lab got it behind\u00a0their eyes, but it quickly spread\u00a0throughout their bodies. O\u2019Neill and Smalec thought the cancer\u2019s DNA might give clues as to why it spread so quickly, perhaps shedding light on how human cancer spreads.<\/p>\n

\"Chromosomes<\/a>
Chromosomes from P. leucopus, the inbred cancer-prone mouse species in Rachel O’Neill’s lab. The centromeres glow red. (Brendan Smalec\/O’Neill lab)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Smalec started looking at sections of DNA that were expanded, duplicated over and over. This is common in cancer cells, and is one of the things that makes them abnormal and dangerous. Once Smalec found an expanded section of DNA, he\u2019d try to map it back on to the cell\u2019s intact DNA to figure out where in the chromosome it came from. Chromosomes are the structures cells use to organize DNA. They are usually made of two long strings of DNA, linked together in the middle or the end so that they look like Xs or Vs.<\/p>\n

One of the expanded sections of DNA he found always seemed to be touching the centromere of its chromosome. The centromere is the spot where the chromosome\u2019s two strings of DNA join up, the cross of the X or the tip of the V.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know what to think, because I was new,\u201d Smalec says. He\u2019d been in the lab just two weeks, \u201cbut I knew it wasn\u2019t what we were looking for and I wasn\u2019t tuned into evolution.\u201d But evolution is where he ended up going. He started looking at the DNA of six other species of mice related to the ones in the lab. And all of them had this same DNA sequence stuck to their centromeres. Smalec started to wonder whether this particular piece of DNA played a role in centromere formation, or maybe in the speciation events, when one type of mouse splits into different species.<\/p>\n

\"Brendan<\/a>
Brendan Smalec ’16 (CLAS)(SFA) in Rachel O’Neill’s lab. (Sean Flynn\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After two and a half years of tracking this DNA sequence through different rodent lineages, Smalec and O\u2019Neill will submit a paper on it to a scientific journal sometime this autumn. And it won\u2019t be just a line boosting Smalec\u2019s medical school resume. Somewhere along the way, Smalec decided that rather than become a doctor, he\u2019d like to continue in research and get a Ph.D. in genetics and evolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m kind of sad,\u201d O\u2019Neill jokes. \u201cIf I\u2019m sick, Brendan would\u2019ve been a really good doctor.\u201d But she\u2019s also pleased at his new path, and says he brought a lot of insight and creativity to her lab. \u201cThis is a two-way street. We talk! He brings a lot to me, just as I bring to his work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part of a successful university experience is being open to change. Brendan Smalec’s story is a case in point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":105847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,156,2076,2458],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[354],"class_list":["post-105480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-profile","category-research","category-undergraduates"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 05:19:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105480"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105908,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105480\/revisions\/105908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/105847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105480"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=105480"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=105480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}