MultiDisciplinary
Anterior Cruciate Ligaments
By Alexis Jenkins
Alexis Jenkins definitely is very active from the start. Sports have always been her passion; growing up, you could always catch her outside at the softball field playing with her high school, tournament team, or family. This all was until she had an almost career-ending injury occur not just once but twice. Luckily, she could continue to play two years of college softball, but she always wondered why tearing your ACL, also known as your Anterior Cruciate Ligament, was such a big deal. Now years later, she is a Senior here at Millersville studying Sports Journalism. After graduation, she plans to work her way into the ESPN world to eventually become an ESPN Broadcast Journalist.
Multipotency of Trunk Neural Crest Cells in Trachemys Scripta
by Seth Martin
Craniosynostosis is a common deformity involving premature fusion of the skull bones. A better understanding of the process by which the skull bones form (intramembranous ossification) could result in improved treatment options. Some skull bones are produced by a population of migrating, multipotent cells from the developing brain, known as neural crest cells (NCCs). In turtles, the bony plates that comprise the ventral part of the shell (the plastron) are also formed by intramembranous ossification. I am investigating whether similar migrating NCCs, arising from the developing spinal cord instead of the brain, form the plastron. Turtle NCCs were isolated, allowed to differentiate, and the resulting cell types were analyzed. The fraction that produced typical NCC-derived cells, such as pigment cells, was compared to the fraction that produced bone-forming cells. This experiment tested the model that NCCs migrating through the body of turtle embryos are capable of differentiating into bone.
About the Author
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Seth L. Martin is a junior majoring in Biology with a pre-med concentration at Millersville. His passion for improving human health led him to seek a research topic that expands the current body of human healthcare knowledge. His project employs the turtle as a model system for studying human skull formation, specifically examining the role of neural crest cells in bone establishment and growth. He was able to verify that, unlike any other known organism, turtles have a late-migrating wave of neural crest cells that produce bone. Seth’s future research will utilize this model to study how neural crest cells become bone cells and also to apply this knowledge to common bone-formation maladies in humans. Because he plans to attend medical school to pursue family medicine, Seth will surely appreciate the organizational skills, conceptual enhancement, and self-discipline he learned from his active scientific research at Millersville.