Undergraduate Biology Student Researcher: Christopher Kywe

Christopher Kywe is a KU Junior pursuing a B.S. in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, with a minor in French. Christopher also founded KU’s chapter of the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

How did you get involved with starting the KU Chapter of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB)?

"[I was introduced] through my AP Environmental Sciences teacher in high school, every year he would take a few students to the National ASBMB meeting and during my senior year he invited me to go along with him. 

In order to get the best experience from attending the conference my teacher wanted me to present, so we would meet up every week and read an article or two together. My presentation was over making a model of a Sodium Potassium pump and showing how it interacts with this toxin, Digitalis (foxglove).

[While at KU I realized] it would be really cool to come back to ASBMB in a different role, when I saw that they were having their annual meeting in person in April, and I knew I had to go back. It was what kick started my journey in biochemistry into molecular biology, it just seemed natural for me to come back, just with more knowledge and actually working on my own project, as opposed to something assigned to me by my high school teacher. 

[Dr. Ackley helped establish the club] and I gathered 5 other friends and we started this organization and we’ve had two meetings up until this point. Next week we’ll be bringing in a speaker. It’s been really successful, even though we started 2nd semester, we get 8 to 10 people at ever meeting. And I’m really happy about that and I just want to see how it grows.”

Christopher’s research at KU

“At one point in a person’s life they have gotten sick, with the flu or the common cold, everyone has come down with something but the thing is, if you take one of those sicknesses that everyone had experienced and transpose it onto somebody else, chances are the sickness will look very different. [...]

[My research covers] what is causing the differences in immune response for people infected with the same viruses. We use C. Elegans, a nematode roundworm, as a system to modulate infection. We’re looking at how genetic makeup plays a role in giving a person defense or increasing their susceptibility to certain pathogens.

The gene that I’m looking at is called, mab-5, which stands for Male Abnormal 5, found on the 3rd chromosome of C. Elegans. The interesting thing is that mab-5 is a transcription factor, a protein that binds to DNA and encourages certain genes to be expressed more. When we take mab-5 and analyze which genes are being up or down regulated. We observe that mab-5 Mutants (animals that express more or less mab-5) have genes that revolve around immune activity that are being differentially expressed. [...] We can then take these mutants and see how they respond to certain kinds of pathogens.”

‘We have all these different mab-5 mutants. Some that have no mab-5 function, some with too much, and some with too little, and then a control group. I took these mutants, and I grew them up on bacterial pathogen. On the control what I found, is that all these mab-5 mutants, regardless of expression, all live the same on the non pathogenic e. Coli that we’re feeding them. That suggests that mab-5 regardless of expression, does not alter the lifespan of worms in any shape and form. That makes analysis easier, because we don’t have to account for any inherent weaknesses that they have, they all have the same survivability baseline on control. 

I did more trials on [Staphylococcus epidermis] and found that animals who aren’t expressing mab-5 live for identical amounts of time as the control trial on S. epidermis as those on the non pathogenic e. Coli. However, if you are expressing mab-5 properly, then these animals live longer than they would on e. coli. 

I’m trying to see why they live longer, I’m testing that by using confocal microscope, to see when mab-5 is being expressed in these animals, and I’m doing additional trials with mab-5 mutants. Overall, it looks like there is a lot of avenues I can take with this research.”

What does your research look like on a day-to-day basis? 

“Every day, I take my worms out of the incubator, sit in front of a microscope, and transfer my worms to freshly seeded agar plates. On other days, I would also look for worms at the fourth larval stage, the prime experiment stage, and I start new trials on them.

I also have to seed my own bacterial plates, so sometimes I streak out bacteria on a plate. I collect one colony, grow it into a culture, over four days. Then I can use those plates on my experiments.

Soon I’ll be using the confocal microscope on transgenic worms, they have genes from jellyfish, called a green florescent protein (GFP) when you expose that protein to a certain wavelength of light, it causes the proteins to fluoresce, which allows you to see those specific structures. Pretty soon, I’ll be using those animals to see where and when mab-5 is expressed.”

What’s something interesting You've learned from the research?

“Something I learned about the research process, is that everybody is going to make mistakes during the research process. The goal isn’t not to make mistakes, it’s to make mistakes and learn from them. Sometimes your experiments just wont work, and you won’t know why, but you’ll have to try something else and that isn’t a bad thing. That’s what relieving about research compared to a regular class. In research if you don’t know a concept, someone will explain it to you, and you can understand it. But in class, if you mess up, it’s something that will stick with you. I like being able to make mistakes and focus on the learning and not the letter grade.

“Dr Ackley told me something interesting, he said, “By the time you’re reading something in a textbook, it’s probably been known for 10 years, and they just proved it’.”

What advice would you offer to other students?

1. "[When searching for research opportunities] Just keep trying. Professors are very busy people, between doing their own projects, running the labs, and the administrative duties that go   unnoticed [your email can get lost]. Professors are busy people, so be understanding of that, but  don’t be afraid to reach out again and again until you get a response."
2. "If you do get over the barrier of reaching out to professors, and you get someone to talk to you. See if you can get a chance to talk to them -- You want to know that you’ll work with them on a personal level. Sometimes you’ll meet a professor, and you’ll know they don’t mesh with you. That’s okay, just find someone else and make it work. There is nothing wrong with saying no to an opportunity, you just have to do what’s right for you. Take some time to discern and get to know the professor."
3. "If you find an opportunity, apply for it. People are so used to comparing themselves to one another [...] Its easy to count yourself out and think you won’t be able to get the opportunity when there are all these other even more amazing people out there. You never know until you put yourself out there, do what you can, and if you get it that’s amazing, and if you don’t work on the next thing. At the end of the day apply for what you want, you never know who else is applying and you may end up as one of the few.  If you see it and like it, go for it, if you need help along the way don’t be afraid to ask.”

What do you plan to do after you graduate from KU?

“The end goal is to be a MD-PhD, a physician scientist, I want to run research and treat patients. I want to increase my analytical capabilities and learn some of those research techniques and help contribute to our natural world, and I want to be able to go into a clinic or a hospital setting and have a chance to converse with patients and help them understand what they are dealing with.

If I got everything I ever wanted, I’d participate the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Program. It’s a 4-year medical school program,  you go to med school wherever you want, and then you go to either Oxford or Cambridge to do your PhD. That’s the goal.”