Tequila Porter

Hello, my name is Tequila Porter and I am currently a PREP Scholar at the University of Georgia. I am a native of Asheville, North Carolina, and I earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology at Winston Salem State University. Growing up, my first exposure to seeing the possibility of an African American have a career in medicine was from the Cosby show. Since then, I have always found myself curious about how I could have a future career in medicine, and I believe this is when my interest in science truly began. However it was even more inspiring, when I encountered my first African American female Obstetrician sophomore year of college at a conference at Wake Forest University.

My greatest motivation to succeed with my future endeavors and strongest influence is driven from the fact that I lost my mother to a drug overdose at the age of fourteen. From that moment on, I immediately knew I wanted to learn about human physiology and pharmacology so that I could ultimately reach back into my community and help alleviate issues of drug abuse.

During my undergraduate studies, I became interested in studying the body, pharmaceutical design, and drug treatment mechanisms by conducting research. This is when I truly found my passion in life. Because of my limited research experience from my undergraduate university and my fair academic performance in my science courses, I wanted to take the appropriate steps and build a foundation in basic science research skills by applying for and becoming a PREP scholar at the University of Georgia.  At the University of Georgia, I have two mentors; my faculty mentor is Dr. Melissa Davis, who is the principal investigator of the lab I am currently performing research, and my research mentor is Brittany Jenkins, a third year Ph.D. student in Genetics.

Our lab focuses on DARC or Duffy Antigen Receptor for Chemokines, which is an atypical chemokine receptor that binds to two structurally distinct classes of chemokines, CCL- and CXCL-. DARC has two protein isoforms that are differentially expressed in certain cell types depending on genetic ancestry. My project is to investigate expression levels of one isoform in ancestry specific cell lines to determine the binding specificity of the ligand.  In order to do this, I will overexpress one isoform in an ancestry specific cell line and a knockout the other isoform in same line. I will then do a verification process where I will perform, an immunofluorescence and qPCR to validate if certain chemokines are present or not present. I am enjoying the research experience at UGA through the PREP program, and hope to apply the skills I have learned here to a graduate program in the future.

My name is Tequila Porter and I am a PREP@UGA scholar.