Ms. Marissa Maggio shares that former AP Biology student, Stuy '22 Arthur Liang has been working with Gwyn Uttmark, a PhD candidate at Stanford University. and just won 1st place in Science in The National At-Home STEM Competition. Take a look at his submission here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/3/folders/1trP50WnYV-02CieMzEIGbublXUsoLl8-?usp=sharing
Arthur is also one of the student administrators of the new AP Bio peer tutoring program this year at Stuyvesant. The post on AP Bio tutoring is here: https://talos.stuy.edu/cms/pages/stuyvesant-blog/ap-bio-students-start-tutoring-site/
From Arthur:
For this research project, I designed highly affinitive and selective DNA aptamers for progesterone and testosterone for developing field-ready hormone detection assays. The goal was to make these assays cheap and accessible for trans folx to easily verify hormones that they’re ordering outside of conventional medical institutions so that they can make informed decisions. As a part of my testing procedure, I simulated the secondary structures of several progesterone and testosterone aptamers via the MFold web server and characterized their performance in a visible to the eye colorimetric gold-nanoparticle (AuNP) assay. From my absorption spectra and calculated LOD values for each aptamer, I was able to identify two promising progesterone aptamer candidates.
This project exposed me to the intricacies of several sex hormones and their broad physiological effects on the body, namely their immunoprotective mechanisms. It played a big role in helping me identify what sort of research I wanted to pursue next!
