Sarah and Matt presented posters at the 2018 Department of Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Sarah presented her work on the Drosophila p53 network. She demonstrated that functional p53 enhancers from Drosophila do not function in human cell lines, even when human p53 can bind. These data suggest additional trans-factors are necessary for activity of p53 enhancers.

Matt presented his work on identifying functional human p53 enhancers. He identified three enhancers regulating two human genes (GDNF and GDF15) that are bound and regulated by p53. Interestingly, GDF15 is regulated by two enhancers with differential regulation in the abscence of p53.