Sarah was an undergraduate research student from 2016 to May of 2018 when she graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Biology from the Department of Biological Sciences here at the University at Albany.

Sarah undertook a project in a novel area for the Sammons lab. She investigated the requirement for local co-factors at p53-dependent enhancers by making cross-species comparisons of enhancer function. Sarah took the canonical Drosophila p53 enhancer regulating the rpr gene and asked whether it was functional in mammalian systems. Previous work suggested that this enhancer, which contains a functional p53 response element motif, should be p53-responsive in human cell lines. She found that it wasn’t, and that this was likely due to a lack of conserved transcription factor motifs within the rpr enhancer.

Sarah presented her work at the 2018 Biology Undergraduate Research Symposium.