Lina Wang

B.S. in Biology, Nankai University

Thesis Advisor:  Anthony Brown

E-Mail:  wang.1095@osu.edu

Research:

I am currently studying the effect of hereditary spastic paraplegia mutations in kinesin-1 on neurofilament transport. Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) is a neurodegenerative disease caused by motoneuron degeneration. It is linked to at least 30 loci. Among them I am interested in SPG10, which has point mutations in kinesin-1 gene. To date, four SPG10 mutants have been identified. I am interested in three of them. All the three mutants are single amino-acid exchanges and located in kinesin-1's motor or neck domain. Previous study has shown that kinesin-1 is the main motor to transport neurofilament. Therefore, we want to investigate the effect of these SPG10 mutants on neurofilament transport. What I have done so far is to make these three mutants and then tag them with cMyc. Now I have got all the three cMyc tagged mutants. My future plan will be transfecting them separately into mouse cortical neurons to study their effect on neurofilament transport in vitro.