Congrats to Tova and Hilary for their performance at Pittsburgh SciTech 2016!

Congratulations to high school students Tova Finkelstein and Hilary Serbin for their performance at the 77th Covestro Pittsburgh Regional Science & Engineering Fair!

Also known as SciTech, this is an open and local competition of research projects in the fields of science, mathematics, and engineering. This competition is open to all students in grades 6-12 from the 23 counties within Western Pennsylvania and one county in Maryland. The Science Fair has been a Pittsburgh tradition since 1940. It is also the third oldest science fair in the United States under the affiliation of Society for Science and the Public, which facilitates the International Science and Engineering Fair.

Tova and Hilary presented "Alpha-Arrestin Mediated Trafficking" and placed third in the Senior Biology Category. They were also awarded the Carnegie Mellon University Dept.of Biological Sciences Sponser Award.

Their abstract for the competition is below:

SBI301 Alpha-Arrestin Mediated Trafficking

In order to survive, a cell must respond to its environment by selectively trafficking membrane proteins to new locales. Alpha-arrestins are protein-selective trafficking adaptors for specific transmembrane proteins or cargos. To date, only a handful of alpha-arrestin cargos have been identified. A computational approach called Evolutionary Rate Covariation has identified alpha-arrestin cargo candidates. We will fluorescently tag a subset of these new cargos and assess the ability of alpha-arrestin to regulate their protein trafficking using flourescence microscopy. Preliminary data suggest that this approach can identify specific alpha-arrestin-protein cargo pairs in yeast. This approach can be adapted to mammalian cell applications.