Hayung Y. Email & Phone Number

Assisted in conducting research in skeletal muscle atrophy and hypertrophy in different models, such as sciatic denervation, hindlimb suspension, and compensatory hypertrophy in both young and aged animals; discover whether skeletal muscle atrophy or hypertrophy induced models in young versus aged rats show recovery of muscle in the gastrocnemius, tibialis, soleus, and plantaris muscles separately; determine up regulation and down regulation of genes in the Akt pathway and in the ubiquitin ligases, MuRF-1, also known as Muscle Ring Finger 1, and MAFbx, also known as Muscle Atrophy F-box. Specific techniques include independently performing genomic DNA extraction, mRNA isolation, protein extraction, PCR, Western & Northern blotting, qPCR, co-immunoprecipitations, myofibrillar extractions, cryosectioning, and immunohistochemistry.

Assisted in conducting research on thyroid hormone receptors and whether they are both necessary and sufficient for thyroid hormone induced metamorphosis.Successfully demonstrated NH-3 antagonism and its competition with T3, resulting in a potential thyroid inhibitor. Employed protease protection assays to determine whether NH-3 binding directly to Xenopus TRs, estimate relative binding affinities, and detect conformational differences when TRs are bound to various ligands.Specific techniques include performing transient transfections and in vivo assays in Xenopus laevis; determine binding affinities of thyroid hormone receptors to antagonists and co-repressors and co-activators through protease resistance assays and GST pull-downs;Development of transgenic animals through metamorphosis, in situ hybridization, PCR, Western blotting, protease resistance assays, tissue culture

Assisted in conducting research on various methods of infecting and challenging simian macaques to find an effective vaccine for HIV.Specific techniques include processing animal blood samples to isolate lymph nodes and determine viral load in each animal using co-cultures, DNA purification, PCR, agarose gels, and ELISA.Helped produce antigens using tissue culture, cell infection, protein purification, SDS-PAGE and Western blotting; work on antigen production project in conjunction with the National Institute of Health to provide specific proteins crucial to laboratories in Africa for immunoassays for detecting the rinderpest virus and SIV virus in cattle.