Four Case Western Reserve University undergraduate students presented at the Society for Developmental Biology’s 12th Structural Birth Defects Meeting, held Oct. 18–20 in Washington, DC. All four students received travel funding awards from Support of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE).
Helen Molteni and Melissa Phung-Rojas each gave 12-minute platform presentations, and both received an award for best presentation. Molteni presented “Time to shape up: The role of fibronectin in skull bone cell expansion.” Phung-Rojas presented “Walk this way: role of non-canonical Wnt signaling in calvarial expansion.”
Megan Gregory presented a poster and gave an elevator pitch titled “Too close for comfort: Role of fibronectin 1 matrix in maintaining the space between the expanding calvaria.”
Radhika Atit, professor of biology, mentors Molteni, Phung-Rojas and Gregory.
Rachel Wyetzner presented a poster from her summer Amgen Scholars Program at Yale University titled “Sumtaxom-binding protein 5 (STXBP5) plays a role in germ layer specification, left-right patterning, and heterotaxy.”
Wyetzner was mentored by Professor Mustafa Khokha, professor of genetics and pediatrics at Yale University.