Samihah Islam
Samihah is an undergraduate at Vanderbilt (class of 2018) majoring in Neuroscience. She enjoys baking and sewing, among other things.
Research Description
Samihah is focusing on modifying enhanced mouse visual arrestin that can bind unphosphorylated rhodopsin in vivo without causing unwanted side effects. She is currently testing the effects of elimination of potentially harmful AP2 by targeted mutations or truncation of the C-terminal tail (containing the AP2 site) on constitutively monomeric and triple alanine substituted backgrounds. Suppressing the formation of the arrestin-1-AP2 complex should prevent photoreceptor death. Additionally, by clipping the C-terminal, she hopes to determine the significance of this domain in the arrestin complex.