The 2017 Seventeenth Annual UMM Undergraduate Research Symposium (URS) celebrates student scholarly achievement and creative activities. Students from all disciplines participate in the URS. Types of presentations include posters, oral presentations, and short or abbreviated theatrical, dance, or musical performances.
Presentations are accompanied by discussions and multimedia.
Alzheimer’s Disease is a neurodegenerative disease that causes problems with thinking, memory, and behavior and accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. The presence of amyloid plaques in the brain, formed by the aggregation of a small, misfolded peptide called amyloid beta (Aβ), has been linked with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are compounds made of metal ions coordinated to organic ligands to form pores that can trap different sized proteins and peptides. The use of a pre-stained protein ladder allows efficient testing of the protein absorption by multiple MOFs in hopes of characterizing one that will absorb small proteins similar in size to the aggregates of Aβ. UV-vis spectroscopy and gel electrophoresis where then used to track protein absorption. Previous research has identified HKUST-1 and Co(11)MOF-5 as MOFs of interest to continue studying. This research continued to characterize properties of those MOFs and investigated other MOFs such as ZIF-9 and ZIF-12 Characterizing these MOFs may lead to a better understanding of physical and chemical traits of MOFS and the involvement of MOFs in Alzheimer’s treatment as MOFs have the potential to help us understand vital information about the peptide that aggregates to form amyloid plaques.