What I did as an undergraduate

Well, I thought I would dive into a bit of history. I am adding to the series of what I do now with things I have done. I chose to begin with my undergraduate time, because going further back would be a bit much and not too terribly interesting. I am keeping this in relation to science, so the other significant parts are conspicuously absent from this post, as is anything I did in graduate school.

If I were to have written this blog in 2003 or 2004 this is what I would have written: (I actually did write most of this then, but I've elaborated a bit now).

I did all (well nearly all) of this work under red-light conditions in the lab of Dr. Heidi Vollmer-Snarr at BYU.


My research revolves around A2E, a pyridinium bis-retinoid (see below).


A2E was first discovered in the late 90's and is easily oxidized by light radiation from the UV to about 500nm (see really cool picture below).


Compare the above image with this one and see you see that playing with blue light runs in the family. Harrison just wanted to be like dad. Poor little guy.


A2E was first isolated from retinal pigment epithelium and was later synthsized biomimetically. Our lab synthesizes A2E by reacting 2 equivalents of all-trans-retinal with one equivalent of ethanolamine and acetic acid. My research with A2E has evolved into two directions:

The first is A2E's implications in the etiology of age-related macular degeneration. We have found significant concentrations of A2E present in both lipofuscin and melanolipofuscin of human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells, meaning that A2E is likely more involved in AMD than originally thought. We use high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to quantify A2E extracted from human and murine eyes. I have been working in collaboration with Dr. Kang Zhang (see What I did in Graduate School) at the University of Utah studying the human ELOVL4 gene that we believe may be partially responsible for AMD. Our research involves studying A2E concentrations in ELOVL4 transgenic mice compared to normal mice. See publications.

My second area of focus is A2E's application as a photodynamic chemotherapy treatment. Evidence shows that A2E is not cytotoxic alone, but becomes lethal when exposed to blue light. The light mechanism involved in A2E toxicity can be controlled and used to trigger cytotoxicity in cancer cell lines. We have been studying A2E's triggered cytoxicity on HeLa cell lines, but have recently begun similar experiments on HL-60 cells. We hope to begin further studies on MCF-7 cells soon. We have also linked folic acid onto A2E making an A2E-FA compound that we will use in competition assays with A2E. I presented several papers on this topic at national meetings and hope to have a journal publication soon.

I should also acknowledge my grants from BYU ORCA and the BYU Cancer Research Center.