Effects of Aging and Gene Dosage on Vertebral Column Regularity

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Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Thursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT

Alyssa Carlson
Alyssa Carlson

Alyssa Carlson is a rising senior (’21) from Jamestown, NY. She graduated from Southwestern High School in the class of 2017 and is currently in the works of establishing a SWHS student of color and alumni of color network and support program. At Wesleyan, she is a pre-med double major in Biology and MB&B with a minor in Chemistry. She has intentions of going to medical school after a few gap years to work in biomedical research. She has been a member of the Devoto lab since her freshman year and has gained a keen liking for zebrafish as a model organism. In her free time, Alyssa enjoys ice skating, making origami, and going on hikes. If you have any CT hiking suggestions, she would be enthusiastic to hear them.

Abstract: The vertebral column is the hallmark of vertebrates and provides essential structure as an arrangement of regularly repeated segments along the anterior-posterior axis. Congenital spine disorders are diagnosed by vertebrae that visibly lack this regularity, and are aberrant in their size, spacing, or morphology. Other times however, patients may be diagnosed with spine disease deemed to be idiopathic because the cause of the disorder is unknown or was not obvious/apparent at birth. Currently, our objective is to propose a congenital explanation for spine disease that develops later in life that may otherwise be deemed idiopathic, by studying the effects of subtle, perhaps overlookable, defects early in spine development that may become exacerbated over the process of aging. We are modeling this by studying early minor defects in vertebral length regularity caused by slight disruptions in somitogenesis, which is a developmental event in which the embryonic tissue that surrounds the axis becomes segmented into transient structures known as somites, and occurs before the spine even develops. These subtle defects in somite patterning will be induced by differential levels of Tbx6, which is instrumental to somite formation, and its expression will be modified via heat shock and genetic mutation. We then compare the defects in vertebral length regularity in young individuals with that of comparable older fish to observe if the process of aging exacerbates these subtle underlying congenital vertebral defects, improves the defects, or if the defects remain stable with age. Preliminary vertebral length data suggests that slight defects in somitogenesis caused by differential Tbx6 expression increases irregularity and variability of vertebral body length, and that the process of aging may increase this variability further into adulthood.

Alyssa-Carlson-Research-Poster-2020-Alyssa-Carlson

Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Thursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT

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