Achievement

IGERT Trainee Marc Griesemer analyzed fluorescence protein data in collaboration with experimentalists Professor Anne Robinson and Dr. Carissa Young. They examined the localization of the chaperone protein BiP on unfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of yeast cells. Conditions of induced stress were enacted on the cells, with a tag recording the amount of fluorescence for image analysis. Then they employed fluorescence fluctuation methods to examine the statistical significance of the fluorescent intensity pattern to quantify the degree of BiP localization or clustering. They found through a bootstrapping method that the pattern of fluorescence in the cells was heterogeneous to an extent that would be extremely unlikely by random chance, and showed using the Number and Brightness (N&B) technique that the degree of clustering of BiP on unfolded proteins under induced stress differed significantly from that in the homeostatic ER.