Date
4-2025
Project Type
URC Presentation
Department
Molecular, Cellular, and Biomedical Sciences
College or School
COLSA
Class Year
Senior
Major
Biochemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biology
Faculty Research Advisor
Matthew MacManes
Abstract
As extreme environments like deserts expand due to global climate change, biologists are looking to the weird and wonderful creatures that live within them to instruct conservation efforts. The cactus mouse is one of the most hardcore desert specialists: it has adapted to be able to live its entire life without drinking water, and members of the MacManes evolutionary genomics lab, like me, are dedicated to finding out how. For my Honors senior thesis in biochemistry, I conducted a transcriptomic study to investigate the root instigator of the dehydration response, the brain. As the brain is not commonly analyzed in the context of the dehydration response, my study compared the transcriptomic activity of five major brain regions in cactus mice with and without access to water. I have been able to determine several critical biological functions associated with the brain’s dehydration response and look forward to deeper analysis.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Nicholls, Sarah A.; Hegde, Disha; and MacManes, Matthew D., "Using RNA Sequencing to Examine Encephalic Gene Expression in Cactus Mice" (2025). Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) Student Presentations. 618.
https://scholars.unh.edu/urc/618