RIA GUHA

• Gained experience in designing and managing laboratory projects and experiments to screen different mobile genetic elements.
• Designed vectors and reagents for molecular cloning using SnapGene. Executed different transfection techniques in mammalian cell lines, performed flow cytometry and analyzed data using FlowJo and GraphPad Prism.
• Gained experience in working with automated liquid handling equipment such as Hamilton's STAR, Tecan as well different Flow cytometer systems such as NovoCyte and iQue3.
• Assisted in the development of new research proposals and presented research findings at team meetings.
• Provided support and guidance to junior lab staff.

Molecular Biology TA (Aug 2021- Dec 2021)

• Assisted students in techniques like molecular cloning, bacterial transformation, DNA and RNA isolation, restriction mapping, PCR and RT-PCR, CRISPR/Cas9 mediated gene editing and protein overexpression and purification.

Protein Biochemistry TA (Jan 2022 - March 2022)

• Assisted students in techniques like protein assays, protein chromatography, SDS-PAGE, western blotting, protein modification and crosslinking.

Lab Math TA (Aug 2021 - March 2022)

• Taught basic lab calculations to first-year graduate students involving buffer concentrations, antibody dilutions, cell culture and protein assay graphs.

Project on genome instability induced by topoisomerase misfunction: biological and biochemical properties of hypercleavage topoisomerase II mutants.

PI: Dr. John Nitiss, UIC-College of Pharmacy

• · Using yeast as a model system to study human topoisomerase type II enzymes and to understand DNA damaging effects arising from mutations in the enzyme contributing to their role in driving tumors
• · Performed molecular cloning to generate plasmid DNA with mutations and screened them for their DNA damaging nature.
• · Expression of DNA damaging mutant proteins in yeast cells and protein purification using nickel-affinity purification
• Characterization of yeast hypercleavage mutants to examine their sequence preference using in vitro DNA cleavage assays.

Project on gene editing using CRISPR/Cas9 technology to generate K579T edit in Topoisomerase type II alpha.

PI: Dr. Karin Nitiss, UIC-College of Pharmacy

• Performed transient transfection and electroporation
• Designed guide RNAs to perform transfection with Cas9-RNP and ssODN complex to introduct single amino-acid edit
• Used online prediction tools such as CCTop, Benchling, Crispeta and Addgene
• Also performed T7 endonuclease assay after transfection.

Project on application of genomics data to classify Prostate cancer using SVM (Support Vector Method) (Aug 2019 - May 2020)

• Objective of project was the analysis of prostate cancer data sets obtained from NCBI (National Centre for Biotechnology Information) to use biomarkers in predicting the outcome in the Gleason score.

Project on isolation of Anti-freeze protein (Dec 2017 - Mar 2018)

• Objective of project was to isolate anti-freeze protein in bacteria, to check for bacterial survival under freezing conditions and whether any resistance is exhibited during freezing
• Soil samples taken from Nepal, Khopra Trek (located in Annapurna base camp), Gokyo Ri and Cherko Ri (located in Everest base camp).

• Undergone project training work and learned plasmid isolation techniques, transformation of plasmid, protein purification and classification by SDS-PAGE, Western and Southern Blotting.