The Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Student Association puts on an annual Rapid Fire competition, where graduate students are given 3 minutes and 1 slide to explain their research to a general audience. Hanna Erickson was our lab’s representative this year and won FIRST PLACE along with a $500 conference travel award!

Here is Hanna’s slide:

Hanna studies a protein called IQGAP1, which is a scaffold protein. This picture explains how scaffold proteins work. These two people are like proteins who are brought together by their mutual love of this beer called IQGAP1 IPA just like the proteins are brought together by their mutual binding to IQGAP1. IQGAP1 is not directly involved in this interaction, and this interaction can occur in the absence of IQGAP1, but it does increase the likelihood of their interaction just as this IPA can increase the likelihood of a productive interaction. IQGAP1 IPA is a pretty popular beer and can help facilitate a number of different interactions. To study these, we shut down production of IPA or produce more and look at how those interactions change and ultimately how that affects the liver environment.