My name is Gabrielle Bulliard, and I am a Pat Walker Honors College Fellow majoring in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Biology. This summer I had the privilege to intern at Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center to expand our knowledge on the effects of dietary supplementation on muscle.

This summer I worked as a research assistant for two months in Little Rock as a part of Dr. Sree Chintapalli’s lab at the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center. I entered this position through the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute Summer Science Program, which was suggested to me through my work with Dr. Harris at the U of A. During the summer, I identified metabolites that interact with the muscle protein myoglobin through a myriad of experiments and background research. My main focus of the summer was malate, as it is a topic of contention in nutrition supplementation and an interest of the lab. There were many techniques previously used by my lab for identifying the effects of different metabolites on myoglobin, and I set about to learn them. I was trained in isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) experiments, oxygen kinetic experiments, peroxidase activity assays, and molecular docking simulations. ITC and oxygen kinetic experiments were simple to learn in practice, as I just had to work the machines, load the samples, and then clean the devices. Peroxidase activity assays were quite different, as they depended on a slightly complicated physical protocol. I spent most of my summer with the ITC machine as it takes around an hour and a half to run and clean per experiment. In between experiments, I was taught to take the raw data we collected and convert it to a state that we could use to compare to experimental data from other metabolites and proteins. These experiments allowed me to explore the relationship between malate and myoglobin and how their interaction affects the body. The skills that I gained from working with these machines and utilizing their data can be applied in many different applications, and not just for myoglobin and the metabolites it interacts with. ITC experiments are commonly used in background research for novel medications and discovering biological processes among other applications. My work also showed me how to use background research to guide the design of my experiments and how to change and develop my hypotheses based on this research. At the end of the summer, I created an abstract for the work I had done and created a presentation to share with the other students in the Summer Science Program. My lab helped me show our results in a compelling and succinct manner. In between my work, I also had the opportunity to listen to many presentations about different departments in the hospital from sports medicine to neurosurgery. Many of the clinicians and researchers that shared their work with us also presented ongoing clinical trials they were involved in and where each of their fields were heading. I was also able to shadow clinicians and pharmacists to learn about their everyday lives and the internal mechanisms of the hospital and its associated branches. This gave me a glimpse at the future of medicine and standard medical practice and how a biomedical engineer might improve it. Working with non-academic PhDs allowed me to fully experience what my future may be like and how best to get to where I want to be. Working with Dr. Chintapalli and his colleagues has cemented in my mind that I would enjoy working in research and that I should pursue a PhD in the sciences.