HHS senior Bontrager to participate in Washburn's Apeiron

It’s a rare occurrence for a high school student to participate in Washburn University’s annual Apeiron, an event that allows stu­dents to showcase research, schol­arship, creative activities and community engagement activities in a setting similar to a professional meeting.

“High school students are not traditionally allowed to participate in research at Washburn,” said Holton High School senior Alexan­dria Bontrager.

But this Friday, Bontrager, daughter of Bruce and Barbara Bontrager of rural Whiting, will be among those showing the results of their research on the Washburn campus during this year’s Apeiron.

Bontrager’s work with Wash­burn senior Maddison Williams on limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) will be featured on one of 81 poster presentations to be dis­played from 3:45 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday at Washburn’s Memorial Union. The presentation will focus on research Bontrager and Wil­liams have conducted under the guidance of Dr. Takrima Sadikot, assistant professor of biology at WU.

Bontrager, who has been taking college courses at WU starting last fall and has nearly completed two full-time semesters at the univer­sity, first got involved in research as a student in a cellular biology course, where her research profes­sor “identified me as a promising student with good questions.” This led to a spot as a genetic researcher in the course, she said.

“During my first semester, I mapped the genome of drosophila elegans, a species of fruit fly through Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.,” Bontrager said. “Should my research prove to be successful or important, my work could be published within the next year or so.”

She continued to work with Dr. Sadikot, assisting in the professor’s graduate research on the protein telethonin, also known as TCAP. According to Bontrager, one such form of LGMD, known as LGMD-2G (telethoninopathy), occurs as a result of mutations in the TCAP gene, which codes for a muscle protein that is eventually “impor­tant for the regulation and devel­opment of normal muscle struc­ture.”

However, she said, the overall structure of the telethonin protein is unknown, and the research she’s doing with Sadikot and Williams aims to use techniques in molecular biology to “clone the TCAP gene, express and purify the telethonin protein, and subsequently use structural biology techniques to determine the complete structure of the telethonin protein.”

Bontrager said this particular re­search project was assigned to her by Sadikot as a means of continu­ing the professor’s graduate re­search on the subject. She eagerly took on the assignment as a con­tinuation of her own studies in medical research, as it has driven her to find out more about the more than 30 other kinds of LGMD that impact people.

“I was very interested in learning about how protein structure affects function and how mutations can cause disease,” she added.

Laboratory work — also known as “bench work,” Bontrager said — is at the heart of her research this semester, but she is able to balance it with a busy high school life, she said. She’s also done some obser­vational work under Dr. David Al­len of Holton Family Health Clinic and Dr. Michelle Schierling of Stormont-Vail Regional Medical Center, in addition to being active with Circleville Christian Church and Kansas Karate and Weapons Academy in Holton, among other things.

Still, it doesn’t deter her from her research on LGMD, which she said is an essential step toward her desired career as a doctor or re­search physician.

“I plan to major in biochemistry and pursue research during my un­dergraduate and graduate studies,” she said. “The opportunity to pre­pare for more advanced research in the future has been wonderful.”

That research, she said, will in­clude a focus on genetics, specifi­cally HDAC-5, which is believed to impact neural development and as­sist in nerve injury repair. She added that it is possible that further study of HDAC-5 could lead to in­novations in treatment options for those impacted by injury or trauma to the central nervous system.

In the meantime, Bontrager said she is seeking a scholarship that will enable her to teach at least 100 people about LGMD, and as a re­sult, she has made a priority of let­ting people know about it.

“I have presented about LGMD to the Organismal Biology lecture and lab classes at Washburn Uni­versity as well,” she said. “I hope to use the knowledge that I have gained through research and edu­cation to help others.”

The most important aspect of her work, she noted, is the research.

“Research in and of itself, I would argue, is beneficial for eve­ryone, whether it be in science, lit­erature or the like,” she said. “Re­search has proven to develop my problem-solving skills and has en­couraged me to approach problems from different angles when faced with failure or difficulty, which will prove to be invaluable to my future career as a physician, and ultimately, allow me to be a func­tioning, valuable member of soci­ety.”