Center on the Biology of Aging

Victoria St. Amand is a student in the lab of Professor Robert Reenan. Her project focuses on modeling the role of TDP-43 in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) in Drosophila. Deletion of the Drosophila TDP-43 homolog (tbph^Δ) causes premature adult lethality and motor defects beginning in development. However, engineering the human (hTDP-43) coding sequence into the Drosophila transcription unit rescues survival and motor defects. To understand why tbph^Δ die and define the essential conserved functions of hTDP-43 responsible for rescue, Victoria has analyzed bulk RNA sequencing of adult brains from wildtype, tbph^Δ, and hTDP-43 animals and is currently following up on several rescued hits, including validation by qPCR. Victoria matriculated in the MCB Program in September 2018 and is currently in her fourth year in the MCB Program. She was supported by this T32 from 09/01/19 to 08/31/21). Her work has already contributed to two published papers and more are in preparation.