Dr. Lanre Morenikeji, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, is serious about providing undergraduate students with research opportunities.
Last year, five students collaborated with him on various research projects, and three of them published papers alongside their mentor. This coming academic year, he is again involving a handful of students in his research.
Morenikeji is an immunologist: a person who studies how the body responds to disease. He collaborates with undergraduates at Pitt-Bradford as well as other PhDs and graduate students at other universities on several projects.
Two of his projects focus on how elevated temperatures affect the health of cattle. In a study he designed at the Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology, where he worked as a post-doctoral fellow before coming to Pitt-Bradford two years ago, researchers have found genes that contribute to bovine heat resistance.
Animals with these heat-resistant genes can be bred to each other to increase the animals’ ability to withstand heat without falling sick, which is becoming more important as the climate warms.
Now the team is looking for molecules in the genes that could become the targets of new drugs aimed at allowing animals or humans to better withstand hot temperatures.
An overlapping project looks at the connection between a mammal’s response to heat and the health of its immune system. Morenikeji said that experiencing heat stress can make a body more susceptible to illness. But why are some individuals are more vulnerable to heat stress illness than others? He is looking for the gene that makes the difference.
“This is work that no one has done yet,” he said.
In these experiments, Morenikeji once again works with cattle, but this time only with cells. By using cells and evaluating their responses, he does not need access to a herd of cows, just cells. With cells as models and some relatively simple equipment, he and his undergraduate students can do innovative research.
“In a small plate, we culture a cell and look at the response,” he said. “You have to be deliberate about what you’re looking for.”
Last year, senior biology major Nadiya Andrews of Lansdowne, Pa., had the opportunity to design and execute her own experiment, which explored the role of tiny molecules that can help regulate mammalian immune response to microbes that cause disease.
“It was very impactful for her,” Morenikeji said. “At graduation, she brought her mama to come and meet me. My greatest accomplishment is to see students who passed through my teaching go on to prosper. I have been a product of good mentors, and I want to pass that down. I want to see them have confidence to talk about science.”
Andrews, along with two other Pitt-Bradford students, Anastasia Grystay, a chemistry major from Warminster, and Fatima Saccoh, a biology major from Norwood, shared their findings from their research last year at both undergraduate research and regional research conferences in Erie.
Additionally, Morenikeji published articles with Grystay and 2022 graduate Olubumi Braimah in peer-reviewed journals Veterinary World, Genes and Journal of Immunology. Braimah is currently a medical student at the University of Kansas School of Medicine.
For this academic year, Morenikeji has added equipment to Pitt-Bradford labs and is working on grant proposals to ramp up his research and make it available to more Pitt-Bradford students year-round.
Meanwhile, Morenikeji continues to also pursue two other collaborative research projects in which he would like to involve his undergraduate students. One looks at the genes that make people more susceptible to contracting the COVID-19 coronavirus.
A second project in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Buffalo (N.Y.) looks at whether older mice are more likely to become susceptible to streptococcus bacteria than young mice. While the data with mice is gathered at UB, Morenikeji has been contributing to the analysis of how certain genes are functioning in young versus older mice.
“It is interesting and cool research,” he said.
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