Dylan Frank – NIH Trainee 2023-2025
Research progress: I am obtaining my PhD in the Chien lab, studying regulation of the Lon protease in Caulobacter crescentus. During the past two years I developed my technical skills, critical thinking skills, and my ability to communicate scientific research topics. I came into my PhD having spent just under three years working in a small gene editing biotech company. While that job helped excite me about a future career in biotech, I knew that getting my PhD would be a great opportunity to expand my research and critical thinking skills in driving projects forward, and allow me to bring these skills back to industry in my future career. My project centers around characterizing an endogenous protein of C. crescentus, CCNA_00108 (LotP), that we have identified to regulate Lon protease activity in our in vitro assays. My main focuses in my project are to characterize the regulatory activity of LotP on Lon, physical interactions between LotP and Lon, and the physiological relevance of LotP in C. crescentus cells.