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Jordan O

- Research Program Mentor

PhD candidate at Emory University

Expertise

Neuroscience, genetics, epigenetics, molecular biology, translational research, therapeutics, mouse studies, human studies, autonomic/sympathetic nervous system, skeletal muscle diseases

Bio

Hello, my name is Jordan and I'm currently a PhD student at Emory University. I'm in the Genetics and Molecular Biology program, but I'm in a neuroscience-focused lab. I'm currently researching the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight response) and its role in maintaining skeletal muscle quality. I use mice as my model system, however, I'm interested in ex-vivo cell work as well. While most of my time is spent in lab, I make sure I have some fun weekends to balance out my life! I swam in college at UC Davis and I try to still get back into the water, but now my big work-out interest is weightlifting. I also love going on walks around Atlanta, hiking in the Appalachian mountains, and going off-roading in my Jeep.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

The impact of exercise on muscle quality

We often associate athletes with being physically strong. In fact, there is a strong correlation as we know exercise makes our muscles stronger. Muscles that are no longer being used tend to get smaller (or atrophied). But how is this happening? How can exercise promote a stronger muscle? Understanding which pathways that exercise is working on to make muscles stronger will be very important. Skeletal muscle comprises ~80% of our body weight and if the muscle is sick, it will make the rest of your body sick. Therefore, we need to figure out how to keep muscle healthy if exercise isn’t possible. This project will focus on analyzing data that can be found on publicly available databases and would be perfect for a scientific review paper or a jump start into developing a research project!

Intricacies of the Central Dogma

Our cells are extremely organized and impressively efficient. They make exactly the right amount and type of protein at the right time. This is important for conserving energy and creating quick responses to external stimuli such as healing an injury site or signaling to a neighboring cell. So how do cells maintain this level of organization? Which steps along the protein-making-pathway are being controlled? This project will focus on diving deeper into how cells make proteins, otherwise known as the central dogma. This project can stay broader and look into the main steps of the central dogma, replication, transcription, and translation, or it can become more focused and look into which additional controls can be found at these steps such as post-translational modifications. This would be perfect for a blog idea.

Coding skills

Rstudio

Teaching experience

I have been a Teaching Assistant for 6 semesters for an introductory biology course. Overall, I've taught 8 sections and each section has around 100 students. I held weekly office hours, had 1 on 1 meetings with students, ran exam preps and reviews, and have taught classes.

Credentials

Work experience

Enable Biosciences (2019 - 2019)
Research Associate
PassioInventa (2019 - Current)
Writer

Education

University of California Davis (UCD)
BS Bachelor of Science (2018)
Genetics and Genomics
Emory University
PhD Doctor of Philosophy candidate
Genetics and Molecular Biology

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