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Rensselaer Junior Spends Summer Performing Research With Nobel Prize Winner
Ghofrane Benghanem, a junior majoring in biochemistry and
biophysics, spent the summer doing research in the lab of a
recent Nobel Prize winner.
Benghanem worked in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Axel, who
won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine along with Dr.
Linda Buck, one of his past postdoctoral students. His
laboratory, located at Columbia University College of
Physicians and Surgeons, studies how sensory information is
represented in the brain.
Benghanem worked with postdoctoral researcher Gilad Barnea
and graduate student Kimberly Simpson, on generating a gene
targeting construct for the olfactory receptor MOR10. MOR10 is
believed to play a role in sperm activity, particularly
chemotaxis (the orientation or movement of an organism or cell
in relation to chemical agents).
Benghanem’s research was sponsored by the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute through their Exceptional Research
Opportunities Program (EXROP), a summer research program for
students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
As part of the research program, Benghanem had the
opportunity to network, present her own research, read other
student research papers, and discuss them with faculty.
By: Colleen Carey. February 2005
Published
February 24,
2005
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