Celeste Cummings

Background

About Celeste Cummings

I graduated from Westminster College with my BA in Biochemistry with a chemical emphasis and a minor in mathematics. During my gap year I plan to apply to MD-PhD programs. I decided that I wanted to apply to an MD-PhD program because even though I love science, research, and discovery I want to be able to run clinical trials on patients. My goal is to conduct medical research on genetic diseases. Ultimately, my end goal is to help find a cure to Tay-Sachs disease.I have had two previous research experiences. During the spring of 2017, I joined an independent research team at Westminster College. Dr. Jane Kenney-Hunt was the supervisor of this project. We conducted Quantitative Trait Locus Analysis on long bones (femur, tibia, humerus, and ulna) in BXD strain mice. Our goal was to locate possible genes that could play a role in affecting the growth of long bones in our strain of mice. I learned how to perform QTL analysis using statistical software and presented our project at Westminster College’s Undergraduate Scholars Forum. Being able to successfully find candidate genes that could potentially affect bone growth was one of the most interesting things about the project. This is because after measuring all of the mice bones and performing QTL analysis, we finally could see the results. I learned new information as well as how to use the statistical software. The summer of 2017 I participated in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology REU at The University of Kansas. My mentor was Dr. Justin Blumenstiel. I conducted a study on “Dissecting the Transgenerational Effects of Off-Target Silencing by piRNA”. We wanted to see if gene expression would be affected in female Drosophila offspring depending on which parent gave the offspring the desired allele. At the end of the program, I got negative results, which formulated a new question: Why does transgenerational effects of off-target silencing by piRNA happen in some cases and not in others?