Sarah Mirza – NIH Trainee 2024-2025
Research Progress: I am entering the second year of my PhD in the Mager lab investigating genes that regulate early mouse development. This is my fourth year in the lab: I worked two years as a technician/research assistant before starting my PhD in Fall ‘23. The Mager lab is NIH-funded to characterize a large volume of novel phenotypes arising from alleles produced by the Knockout Mouse Project (KOMP). KOMP aims to create a knockout mouse model for every protein-coding gene in the genome. We assess when early embryonic lethality occurs prior to organogenesis. In addition to my responsibilities as a technician, during those two years I designed assays to sex embryos (male or female) from single embryos as small as 32 cells.
Transitioning to my graduate career, currently my main project is an in situ hybridization expression screen, which aims to identify the spatial- and tissue-specific expression patterns of ~200 unstudied genes in early mouse embryos. I have spent the past year optimizing protocols to perform in situ hybridization on preimplantation embryos as well as generating and testing anti-sense mRNA probes on gastrulating mouse embryos. From this data I hope to identify new tissue-specific markers and identify candidates to make and study novel knockout models. I am now poised to rapidly progress with the screen, which is essential a first aim/goal of my thesis.