Enrico Barrozo

 

I’m Enrico Barrozo. I went to Augsburg College in Minneapolis, MN where I earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Biology.  I’ve always been interested in the human condition. My mom passed away in April of this year and she was chronically ill for nearly 10 years. I was going in and out of hospitals and always being around physicians, I was constantly asking questions to find out what was wrong with my mom. This drove me to be a Biology Major. At Augsburg College I worked with my undergraduate mentor Dr. Matthew Beckman where I learned that I have a passion for research. I find research rewarding and intellectually stimulating. I’m driven by the possibility of discovery and innovation in the daily life of a scientist. I find research rewarding and intellectually stimulating. I’m driven by the possibility of innovation and discovery in the daily life of a scientist. Before this year I would’ve said I’m interested in genetics. However, genetics is a broad field and is more of an approach. I’m interested in personalized medicine and in the future I want to use pharamacogenetics, which is using a person’s unique genetic code to design therapies and prevent disease. Long term goals are to get a PhD where I learn basic science and techniques that will be essential to my future as a scientist. Next, I’ll get post doctorate training and that will determine what I will do for the rest of my life. Eventually, I want to be doing cutting-edge research in my own lab researching medical development or pharmaceuticals.

At Augsburg College I was passionate about a lot of things. A captain of the football team, doing research when I wasn’t in classes, working 2-3 part-time jobs, and working towards getting my degree. Last spring I was awarded with the Student Leader of the Year award for my accomplishments at Augsburg. This meant a lot to me but after graduation I wanted to redefine myself and focus more on my research. Here, in PREP@UGA I’m living the life of a graduate student. I work 40+ hours in a lab, take graduate level courses, and I’m learning essential techniques that will help me to hit the ground running when I’m accepted into a PhD program.

This post-baccalaureate training in infectious disease research will provide evidence that I can be a successful graduate student. I’ve shown that I’m fully dedicated to research and becoming a scientist. My faculty mentor is Dr. Biao He and I work with Shannon Phan, a 4th-year graduate student. I’m studying respiratory syncytial virus. (RSV) infects everyone by the age of 2 and there is currently no licensed vaccine. Symptoms result from lower respiratory infection and virulence of RSV increases when infecting infants, the elderly, and immunosuppressed.  Specifically, my project is investigating the interaction between RSV phosphoprotein (P) and host kinases on the RSV life cycle. The RSV-P protein is a heavily phosphorylated protein that stabilizes the RSV polymerase complex.  It is hypothesized that P phosphorylation by host kinases is important for viral transcription and replication, but the precise role is unclear.  Our goal is to determine which serine and threonine residues in RSV P are critical for RSV replication. Our approach includes… Designing primers to create plasmids encoding RSV P with serine and threonine residues mutated to alanine.  This will prevent phosphorylation at those sites in the P protein.  We will use standard cloning techniques such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), splicing by overlap (SOE), digestion, ligation, and transformation into an E. coli plasmid. Next, we will be… Sequencing the plasmids with the P gene inserted to make sure the correct mutations have been introduced into the gene. Then, we will be… Using these plasmids to perform a luciferase-reporter-based minigenome assay to measure activity of the RSV replication complex. This assay will help us determine if the mutations have an effect on the transcription and replication of RSV.

My name is Enrico Barrozo and I am a PREP@UGA scholar.