tylermerceron@sbcglobal.net
Medical student at Vanderbilt University
I majored in both Plan II Honors (B.A.) and Cell & Molecular Biology (B.S.). I was involved in various organizations on campus and held leadership roles in Beta Beta Beta (a national Biological Honor Society) and the Longhorn Premedical Student Association. While I am dedicated primarily to my studies, I am also a saxophone player, play soccer and am a 2nd-degree black belt in TaeKwonDo and I mentored a middle-school student at a local junior high school.
I joined the Gore Lab in Spring 2008 as a volunteer after hearing about the lab’s dedication to training undergraduates from my Genetics TA. I worked with graduate student Michelle Naugle on a project involving hormone receptor expression (both the Estrogen Receptor-alpha (ERa) and the Progesterone Receptor (PR)) in the hypothalami of aged versus young monkey specimens. We used immunohistochemistry to label these receptors and stereology as a means to quantify the number of neurons labeled. Insight into the change in number of sex hormone receptors in the aged monkey brain will provide information important to the study of female reproductive senescence (menopause) and possible human therapies.