Photo: Bryan Goodchild
Rebekka Anderson, a PhD candidate in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at UMass Chan Medical School, is the recipient of a three-year Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to support her research on how mutations in transporter proteins impact calcium wave intervals and travel between cells, potentially linking to gout, a severe form of inflammatory arthritis.
Anderson conducts her research in the lab of Mark Alkema, PhD, professor of neurobiology, studying monocarboxylate transporter proteins and how mutations in the transporter affect calcium waves in the defecation motor program of C. elegans.
“Calcium waves are coordinated by different cellular processes. Your food moving through your intestine is driven by calcium waves that cause contractions. We’re trying to determine how the timing of the calcium waves is controlled and how they travel between cells,” Anderson said. “What we found so far is this transporter protein might transport something like uric acid, and that somehow this transport of uric acid causes changes in calcium, which could cause some of the symptoms of gout.”
“By doing this very basic science, you can come up with very interesting discoveries,” Dr. Alkema said. “Rebekka has gold in her hands now. A mutation that she has found in a gene is also correlated with gout in human disorders, and now there are all these kinds of genetic questions that you can ask that would be very hard to do in any other model organism.”
Anderson was born in Norway and has lived in China, Oklahoma, Alaska and Texas, before moving to Massachusetts and enrolling at UMass Chan in 2022. She earned her bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Baylor University.
“When I was choosing where to go for my graduate studies, one of the things I liked about UMass Chan was that it was interdisciplinary and collaborative and in an area of the country that I had never really been before. It was a good opportunity and working in Dr. Alkema’s lab has been a good match,” Anderson said.
“Rebekka is a positive force in the lab, and this award is an encouraging testament that she’s doing good work,” Alkema said.
