Rebecca is a certified medical technologist and has
worked while training as a medical technologist in Wheatland and
Sheridan, Wyoming. She also previously worked as a Research Associate
at a Biotech company, Organogenesis, in Canton, Massachusetts. She
came to the Magnusson lab in the Fall of 2002. She brought to the
laboratory her expertise in Western and Southern blots, ELISA, RT-PCR,
gel electrophoresis, cell proliferation assays, flow cytometry,
primary cell culture, and cell migration assays. She is now also
experienced in stereotaxic surgery, spatial memory testing in mice,
receptor binding assays and in situ hybridization. Rebecca is a whiz
at picking up new techniques and quickly becoming proficient in them.
She is currently working on experiments designed to reduce the
expression of NMDA receptor subunits in young mice in order to
determine how important the decline in subunit expression is to the
old mice. She is also examining the role of NMDA receptors in
prefrontal cortex in spatial learning and memory and its interactions
with other receptors.
Publications
B. Scruggs, X. Zhao, R. Hammersmark, K.R. Magnusson (2003)
Performance in a two day reference memory task shows age-related
changes and relationships to NMDA receptor subunit protein expression
in synaptosomes. Soc. Neurosci. Abstr. 29: 633.3. |
