College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Undergrad researcher

Honors project has multiple benefits for biochemistry major Jason Mueller.
When Jason Mueller started working in Gustavo MacIntosh's laboratory in the Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology, he wasn't thinking about the project that is required for him to graduate from Iowa State's Honors Program.

That was a bonus.

"I wanted a job in research so I could build my lab experience," said Mueller, a senior biochemistry major. "It has worked out nicely."

For the first year Mueller worked in MacIntosh's lab, he helped graduate students with their projects, although he admits that he "didn't fully understood what they were doing."

The experience has supplemented Mueller's previous classroom lab work.

"This experience has allowed me to expand on what I've learned in the classroom," he says. "In a teaching lab there is an expected outcome you're supposed to get with an experiment. If you don't get that outcome you know you've done something wrong.

"With what I'm doing now, any number of things can happen with my experiments."

That's what Mueller is finding out with his honors project – "The European White Birch PR-10c Protein Exhibits Ribonuclease Activity and an a-Helix Motif May Be Involved in Catalysis."

"The PR-10c protein is the major cause of birch pollen allergies in humans," Mueller says, "and not much is known about this protein."

One thing that is known about the PR-10c protein is that it has been shown to possess ribonuclease activity, which means it has the ability to degrade RNA.

In his project, Mueller is searching to characterize the ribonuclease abilities of the protein and in particular determining the role of a certain part of the protein's structure in its ribonuclease capabilities.

"This protein is the major cause of allergies from the European White Birch," Mueller says. "Understanding its biological functions may lead to better understanding the allergies themselves and maybe understanding how the protein produces the allergy systems."

A side benefit to Mueller's research is that it will add to the general body of knowledge concerning the PR-10 family of proteins.

Mueller's project is a continuation of work he began last academic year while working as an undergraduate research assistant in MacIntosh's lab.

"It was sort of a trial thing to see if I liked what I was doing and if I did want to take on my own project," he said.

One of the reasons Mueller was interested in this particular project is that after graduating in May, he plans to enter medical school. He has already been accepted at the University of Iowa and hopes to hear soon from other schools.

"I hope to continue to do clinical research in medical school," he said. "But what I'm doing right now is really beneficial. It looks good on my applications."