Minhee Lee

I helped Dr. Giovanni Widmer with his research on the protozoan Cryptosporidium hominus as an intern over the summer of 2016. The cryptosporidium strains are found to be a problem more in third world countries with inadequate health care systems in place. The research focused mainly on trying to cultivate the the protozoa in a lab setting and sequence the genome for clues to neutralize the threat. I extracted the protozoan DNA from rat feces and ran various PCR tests on the 35R RNA gene of the cryptosporidium strains. I also ran agarose and acrylamide gel electrophoresis on the amplicons to ensure their amplification for further analysis. I learned to cultivate cells in medium and run infection experiments with cryptosporidium samples for study.