Title: Isolation and Sequencing of Chick Myocardin and Its Expression at Different Stages of Chick Development

(Research Advisor: Dr. Da-Zhi Wang, Biology Sponsor: Dr. Vickie Bautch)

Thiha Nguyen

Myocardin is a transcription factor found to be vital in the normal development of cardiac and smooth muscle tissue.  Finding out exactly how it works and what factors affect it could lead to a better understanding of what causes congenital heart disease.  Since experimentation on humans is unethical, understanding how myocardin works in other species is the answer.  If we can find similarities in myocardin expression between several species that exhibit heart problems, we may be able to better understand how myocardin plays a role in human heart disease, and eventually find a cure.   So far it has been cloned in humans as well as mice.  My project is to isolate and sequence chick myocardin using cDNA library screening starting with a 600 bp piece of chick myocardin previously isolated and hybridizing it to the library.  I am also studying myocardin expression at different embryonic stages using in situ hybridization.