City Steps - Tasneem Ebrahim

[S.K.] -Hi welcome to City Steps I'm your host S.K. Rana and joining me today on the steps of Earl Hall at Columbia University is Tasneem say "Hi." [Tasneem] -"Hi." [S.K.] -So could you introduce yourself? [Tasneem] -My name is Tasneem Ebrahim. I'm a rising senior at Barnard majoring in cell and molecular biology. What else? [S.K.] -What are you doing over the summer? [Tasneem] -I'm doing research in Dr. Emily Maze's lab up at the Medical Center, the College of Physicians, Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons in an immunology lab. [S.K.] And, okay, that's really cool. So what exactly do you do in-- what exactly to do in an immunology lab? [Tasneem] -So the lab is focused on studying the natural killer cells of the immune system which are the cells in your body that basically kill any other cells that are infected or that are tumor cells. [S.K.] -Wow and they're actually called a natural killer cells? [Tasneem] -Yeah it's it's actually one of the only-- the only types of cells in the immune system that makes like, the name make sense. Because it's just like very descriptive straightforward naming. [S.K.] -We love straightforward naming. [Tasneem] -Yeah it's not like B cells. Like B cell, this tells you nothing about what it does so it's a very, it's so descriptive. Natural killer cells because it's part of the innate immune system so you don't have to like teach it about antigen stuff it just knows what to kill on its own unlike other cells that you know like in the adaptive immunity where you get the-- we get the disease and and they learn what to kill and so on. [S.K.] -So how how exactly does your work occur? [Tasneem] -So there are a bunch of projects that are going on in the lab; it's a it's a big lab. But my specific project is that I'm trying to understand the role of a specific receptor on the natural killer cell in its ability to kill other cells which is what we call cytotoxicity. Yeah so I'm basically trying to understand how exactly like we know this receptor from previous work we know that this receptor is important so-- but we don't know the specific mechanism so that's what I'm trying to work at. [S.K.] -Well so what kind of experiments are you doing right now? [Tasneem] -So what I have been doing for the past few weeks is something called flow cytometry. So flow cytometry is a machine that basically you inject like a sample in it-- so usually the sample is a bunch of natural killer cells right and you what we do is that we are trying to see if you like knock out that receptor that I'm studying what happens to like other proteins myself right. So I basically take the cell line that's that has the knockout receptor and I label the like a certain protein downstream of it that I think is affected but I don't know how it's affected I label it with an antibody and then I put in this machine and this machine basically passes the cells which is really incredible is that it passes the sample so that cell by cell passes through a laser and so each cell gets gets analyzed in your sample and it tells you kind of the magnitude of the fluorescence as well as other things about that cell so you can tell like the size of the cell and everything. So that's flow cytometry and I think it's really cool. Like I've never done it before like a month ago and then I learned about I was like it's crazy how much data you get because you put in a sample of like 10,000 cells and you get information about every single cell in that sample. [S.K.] -Wow. [Tasneem] -And then you can analyze them. You can see like what the majority of cells look like so that's the experiment I've been doing for the past few weeks and now I'm learning a new technique involving microscopy. [S.K.] -Okay so is this occurring by like a mouse model or is it are you using e.coli cells like what is the like framework? [Tasneem] -Yeah this is what the-- something that's really cool about this lab which is I just started this up at summer and part of the reason why I started. Because we're working with the human cell lines. [S.K.] -Oh whoa yeah how do you-- do you use donor cells. [Tasneem] -And so those cells out of the cell lines I'm working with are immortalized cell lines. So yes. Some human gave-- gave cells and like they're there obviously they keep growing so they're not like there are normal cells. The cells that you have are from an immortal line. [S.K.] -You said immortalized line? [Tasneem] -Yeah immortalized cell line and is it in in those cells that you have they're human are you taking those are you taking only the natural killer cells from those yeah so the cells I'm working with are just natural coats natural killer cells and you're knocking out a specific receptor for the purpose of seeing how that affects the natural killer cell and its ability to do its job yes yeah so then once you knock out the the protein how do you knock out this person so I didn't knock it out personally but a lot of the times people use like CRISPR or other techniques to kind of and then you you said that you mark downstream of that receptor that you're looking at so we think there's a specific pathway that this receptor is basically talking to another protein and that that protein is responsible for other things that that results basically in the site of toxicity happening normally right so what we're trying to see is that if you knock out that receptor what happens to the next thing in the in the pathway and so if we see a difference then we're like okay it's probably that's probably the case that it's it's affecting cytotoxicity through this pathway got it so basically you're controlling by saying we're gonna change this one thing if this one thing affects this other thing then they should be directly linked that so then how does what is marking have to do what is the set of marking have to do with everything else even with the antibodies yeah so the way the flow cytometry works is that as the cell passes through this so the videos there's a laser and the cells like passing through the laser so you want to know you want you knock down the receptor and you want to know what happens to protein let's call it protein a right so you how are you going to detect protein you have to label protein a with an antibody so that's like attack and then when the cell is passing through the laser that's the right wavelength it you can set it so that that wavelength detects the antibody right so if the cell has doesn't have that protein anymore than it will fluoresce if it does have the protein it will fluoresce and also you can think of the you can also measure the intensity of fluorescence so if there's lots of that protein you can have lots of fluorescence and vice-versa so the point of using antibodies is to kind of quantify so then the fluorescence because you're choosing a specific wavelength of the Rays of the laser that is you're choosing a specific wavelength of the laser that is linked to the fluorescence of this antibody so you know that the only thing that's fluorescing has to be the antibody exactly yeah that's so interesting I've met I never thought that you could use like flora like fluorescence spectroscopy to to measure the amount of a protein yeah that's fascinating yeah and you you get to that you actually bring up a good point which is one of the things I have to control for is that sometimes so you put like a primary antibody then you put a secondary antibody to amplify your signal and you know for the laser to detect it and so a lot of the times you have to sometimes that secondary antibody binds non-specifically so it binds to your primary but it could also bind to other things that no your primary so you have to have a control sample where you just put the secondary with that the primary and then you have to like if you see any signal there you have to subtract it from the other signal and so there's a lot of work that goes into like making sure that the signal you're getting is actually the protein and not like any other noise oh that's so cool so what would be the implications of this kind of research so knowing a lot of the time this is this is also something I really like about this this lab in this research which I just started and is that it's very close to translation because we are dealing with human cells it's that the more you know about specifically a lot of the times primary immunodeficiencies which means patients who have immune deficiencies that come from kind of issues in their cells rather than like they got infected with something and that resulted in you know so like being like bored of the immune deficiency a lot of the times it's there are issues with natural killer cells so let's say for example you have a person who has a mutation and that receptor that I'm looking at so then they their cells can't kill properly and then they have a deficiency I have to suffer in their lives so if we know exactly how lacking that receptor kind of messes up the cell or how important that receptor is then that makes it easier for people who are developing therapeutics to kind of fix the issue basically so you're essentially mapping the importance of one specific protein in this entire process in the hopes of seeing now that we know exactly how this protein works and where it can be found what can be done about it in the future absolutely I took a developmental biology course where we studied basically how like an organism can develop from a single cell and also we talked all about stem cells and I think I found my passion after dating back I was like I want to work in I would have worked with stem cells so initially that's why I was I was looking at you know joining a lab that is that does deal with stem cells and my lab does deal with stem cell even though my current project doesn't necessarily work with stem cells but another kind of aspect to this lab is not just studying the function of NK or like natural killer cells about a natural killer cells but also its development so what are the most important for the proper development of natural killer cells from hematopoietic stem cells so the stem cells that you have in your in your bone marrow right now that are constantly producing new cells for your blood and for your immune system and those are the cells that can turn into any other type of cell just the blood of minions it's not any other the cells that can turn into any other is if you were talking like any kind of cell in the body is the plural pluripotent stem cells yes or you can what you can do is that you can take you can take you can do induced pluripotent stem cell so some you can it is possible now to take like cells from your inner skin so you have fibroblast and then induce it to become a pluripotent stem cell and then yeah that's actually this is it's like it's this is what really fascinates me and it's it's what I want to do in the future to kind of there are actually projects in my lab where they're taking induced pluripotent stem cells and trying to differentiate them into a natural killer so and seeing what happens in the process but in general just the concept for me is so fascinating that you can it especially in terms of how directly therapeutic so many therapeutic applications like you can take cells from your body and then like instead of having to do like organ transplants and stuff you could just like grow a heart and lap grow a liver in lab and then just like give you your own liver but just like after fixing the mutation or fixing whatever the problem is with it you're done so that's what I want to do that's so cool so you you had perfect segue into in tone just theme what do you want to do or what do you foresee a future path at this point in your life are we talking like a long term or short term both so eventually I I love research that's why I want to do for a career and I love teaching too so I definitely want to career that combines research and teaching so that's why my next step is getting a PhD in terms of the specific so I always knew I want and I wanted to do this but I wasn't sure specifically what area but I think after taking that development psychology class I've just it's just like it's it's one of those guys like I was we were reading papers and I get so excited about the papers and the stuff that weird that I like start snapchatting guys look what they did they took like the monkeys heart and they fixed it with stem cells so it's really cool so I just like it's something that I just enjoy just even reading about which you know like reading a scientific paper it's not easy so the fact that I I could connect so much and like to the point of like snapchatting about it like in the most like kind of immediate kind of social media so it was definitely kind of a channel where I was like okay this is this is exactly what I want to do and so definitely I'm I want to do a PhD and something like stem cell research related and kind of developmental biology and regenerative medicine kind of things and then you mentioned education or teaching is are you with a PhD I guess it lends itself to working at a university in teaching college students if that's something you'd first see in your future for sure that's that's that's a cool that's a goal Wow have you so you mentioned the going into stem cell research you saw the we're going into the specific lab you saw the implication or the applications far more readily would you ever consider going into clinical as in like becoming a doctor or even like going like a step further and like testing like doing a drug design from the from stem cell researchers right now you're still working in basic research not really working in Applied Research would you consider going into application and then maybe setting your up your own credit clinical trial with the help the dog yeah I think I think I'm getting more and more interested in like it's not that I don't like the basic question I like basic research I like the idea of like kind of following a question and answering it but I'm also interested in kind of getting closer to the to the end goal which is kind of the end goal is really to cure something or like help someone I don't necessarily want to be a doctor but I want to be as close as possible to that process though I have never actually tried to be in and kind of like I've never been I look old all I've done so friends but basic so I don't know I have to try it test it out but it sounds it just sounds great and I would love to do that I would love to yeah yeah like I would love to grow that organa or grow that tissue and that's that exact thing that's going to be put in a patient's body so wow that's amazing that was that was amazing and that's also a really great stopping point thank you for letting me interview you thank you and this has been another episode of city steps I'll see you next time

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