Summer internships lead to research wins

The spirit Tiffany Roach found as a summer intern in one of Virginia Tech's research labs helped bring her future into focus.

As part of the Office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs, the Multicultural Academic Opportunities Program offers a 10-week summer research internship during which students both internal and external to Virginia Tech are matched with a faculty member in the areas of research they are interested in pursuing. In addition to a monthly stipend, the program also provides a housing and meal plan.

“Daniel’s lab is a beautiful example of what it means to be a mentor and how collaboration can improve discovery,” Roach said of the Protein Signaling Domains Laboratory led by Daniel Capelluto, associate professor of biological sciences.

Roach was a candidate for the summer research internship as the university she attended as an undergraduate did not offer STEM research opportunities.

Without the summer internship experience, Roach said she would have never envisioned that she would be working on projects that have profound implications for health and helping humans. “The professional development seminars, graduation exam prep class, and genuine desire to encourage and support me helped smooth the way for a productive summer in research and successful graduate school applications,” Roach said.

The Capelluto lab was also the perfect intersection of molecular work that uncovered potential mechanisms for disease, while the summer internship served as a catalyst by providing a platform and support group that made it possible.

Inspiring research

“The research itself was also a point of inspiration for me, as my interests and passion were in molecular mechanisms and how something in the cell worked,” Roach said. “I loved working and thinking on the molecular level, but also felt this need to be involved in human health research.”

Upon returning to her home university after the summer in 2016 to complete her undergraduate degree, Roach knew that wanted to attend Virginia Tech for graduate school. In 2018, she was accepted and found herself back in her happy place as a lab assistant in Capelluto's lab. 

For Roach, pursuing the STEM field was also deeply personal. After watching her father lose the battle with cancer, she was not satisfied with the “there is nothing more we can do” response from doctors. 

“It bothered me that we didn’t have the knowledge necessary to keep fighting, so I knew I wanted to study science and contribute to our understanding of how the body and disease works,” she said.

Now six years later, Roach has successfully defended a Ph.D. in biological sciences while also helping Capelluto’s research team better understand dysentery, a gastrointestinal disease. The latter effort recently was bolstered by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.

Better understanding dysentery – an unresolved disease caused by a bacterial infection – was one of the lingering questions for Roach and Capelluto, researchers both affiliated with the Fralin Life Sciences Institute. Its symptoms include diarrhea, fever, nausea, vomiting, weight loss, and stomach pain.

To help advance their research, the NSF awarded a $840,000 grant to the team. Capelluto, who will serve as principal investigator, will partner with Anne Brown, associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry who specializes in computational modeling, and Carla Finkielstein, professor of biological sciences and director of the Molecular Diagnostics Lab at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC who will use molecular tools to study how the protein TOM1 works under different cell settings.

Breakthroughs in disease research

According to Roach, previous research conveyed that Shigella, a type of bacteria, can infect a human cell more easily by shutting down the cell’s ability to degrade cell surface receptors, but it did not expand on the mechanism of how this actually happens. 

“Our research uncovers how the degradative process is shut down, which is essential knowledge to then design a way to prevent or fix this invasion strategy,” Roach said. “Furthermore, we are unveiling a strategy that other bacteria may be using as well, so this research is providing the foundational stones for major breakthroughs in disease research for the future.”

Cells are dynamic and have the ability to modify protein functions based on their necessities. 

“One such process, known as ubiquitination, can lead to multiple outcomes, by not only changing protein function, but also their ability to be relocated or integrated within a cellular compartment,” Capelluto said.

Roach likens the relationship between TOM1 binding to ubiquitin with that of making responsible choices for one's own health.

“This is what we should be doing in a healthy environment when we're doing our job properly and taking care of our body, but then when the bacterium enters, it knows our weaknesses, such as the temptation of cookies and treats when the afternoon slump hits,” Roach said. “So in a similar sense, the bacteria is producing a different metabolite that then draws — or hijacks — TOM1 away from its job. And it's binding to that rather than ubiquitin.” 

Accelerating summer undergraduate experience

With the new NSF funding comes the opportunity to bring in a new intern from Bennett College to engage in research this summer under the auspices of the newly formed AccelerateSTEM program.

By creating the AccelerateSTEM program, Capelluto's idea was to expand upon the summer undergraduate research internship by allowing the opportunity for students -- including its first student Simidele Rogers -- to stay at Virginia Tech and continue her research during the full academic year. 

Following the completion of the summer internship, Rogers will have the opportunity to continue her research in Capelluto’s lab while concurrently taking online courses from her home institutions until graduation. During the following fall semester, she plans to apply for a one-year accelerated master’s degree at Virginia Tech.

Rogers will continue working in Capelluto’s lab through her senior year and then complete the one-year master’s degree training program offered through Virginia Tech.

“Programs such as AccelerateSTEM open up opportunities for students at historically Black colleges and universities to have access to state-of- the-art labs, world-renowned faculty mentors and possibly consider graduate education at Virginia Tech,” said Monica Hunter, director of the Multicultural Academic Opportunities Program.

Bennett College and Virginia Tech are part of the Virginia-North Carolina Alliance for Minority Participation, a NSF-funded grant that supports STEM students as well as encourages undergraduate research and attendance in graduate or professional school post undergraduate. Capelluto will collaborate with Shenna Shearin, assistant professor of chemistry at Bennett College.