My Experience at Harvard Summer School 2022 at Harvard University
Reflecting on my time studying and researching epigenetics and gene regulation at one of the world’s most renowned universities
By Amirali Banani
July 25 — August 5, 2022 | Cambridge, MA, United States
On July 23, the day after my Summer at Hopkins program ended, we drove almost 900km from Baltimore to Boston, visiting Hershey, PA and Albany, NY along the way. After leaving Baltimore at around noon, we arrived at our hotel in Boston at almost 10 PM. I spent the night packing and preparing for the next day, in which I would move in for my next big experience: Harvard Summer School.
Application Process and Decisions
About 5 months before this, I applied for Harvard Summer School at around the same time as I did for Summer at Hopkins. The application required me to have my school send each of my transcripts from grades 8–10 as well as a letter of recommendation from one of my counsellors or teachers. Additionally, I had to respond to four different academic prompts by writing a paragraph for each to express my thoughts on them. Altogether, the application process for Harvard Summer School was more tedious than that of Summer at Hopkins, and the acceptance rate into the program was rather low. Taking into consideration the competitive nature of the application, I thoughtfully looked over and recited every paragraph that I wrote to ensure that my responses were coherent. Finally, when it was all polished, I submitted my application at the end of February.
After about four weeks, on March 29, the decision for my application came out, and I was informed that I had been accepted into Harvard Summer School. Coincidentally, I was notified that I had gotten into Summer at Hopkins on the same day. I immediately accepted their offers of admission and applied to both programs later that day. I never foresaw that I would be spending my summer at Johns Hopkins and Harvard University. It was at that moment that I knew I would have the summer of my life.
The Epigenetics and Gene Regulation Course at Harvard Summer School
For Harvard Summer School, I applied for a course called Epigenetics and Gene Regulation. This course was no cakewalk. It expanded on the principles of AP Biology to teach us about how environmental factors meticulously affect the molecular mechanisms by which our genes are expressed and encoded into protein using complex terminology and explanations. Most biology courses in high school and even in university focus purely on genetics and inheritance. However, this course was unique in that it used the concepts of gene expression and combined them with new emerging concepts that are still being researched and debated. This speaks to how novel Epigenetics is as a field, as it still requires a lot of investigation to fully understand. Much of the research that we reviewed in the course was very recent and provided us with valuable insights into potential studies that we could investigate in the future to advance the research.
Despite the difficulty of the course, the constant encouragement and excellent teaching of our teacher, Dr. Amy Tsurumi, an Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, made it much easier for us to understand all the challenging material. In the first week, we learned through day-to-day lectures all the theories about Epigenetics and how the expression of genes is regulated by certain biomolecules in response to environmental stimuli. Then, using our knowledge, we spent the second week of the course writing a mock grant proposal for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on a topic of choice that involves a particular epigenetic mechanism. After compiling our research, we organized and structured it in a document following the NIH’s guidelines for writing a grant proposal. Finally, after finalizing our proposals, we each created a short 5-minute presentation summarizing our research and presented our work on the final day of the course.
My Research Project
My grant proposal was titled “The Use of Hypomethylating Agents Against DNA Hypermethylation in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC)”. Methylation is the process of adding methyl groups to a particular molecule. In DNA, methylation is a crucial process that helps regulate the expression of certain genes. However, if too many methyl groups are added, termed “hypermethylation”, certain conditions such as ccRCC can arise. This is because the excess methyl groups prevent tumour suppressor genes from being transcribed by transcription factors. When these tumour suppressor genes can not be transcribed, tumour suppressor proteins can not be synthesized, meaning that the formation of a potential tumour can not be inhibited. My research essentially focused on molecular players known as hypomethylating agents that enter the nucleus of renal cells and demethylate VHL (von Hippel-Lindau) tumour suppressor genes so that they can be transcribed. In my grant proposal, I proposed to use advanced testing methods such as RT-qPCR (reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction), MeDIP-Seq (methylated DNA immunoprecipitation sequencing), and Western Blotting to evaluate the efficacy of the hypomethylating agents in demethylating VHL genes as well as how much of them will be required to ensure a satisfactory outcome. With these hypomethylating agents, it is possible to prevent or potentially even cure ccRCC.
A copy of my original article can be viewed by clicking the link at the bottom of the document preview shown below.
Harvard Summer School was certainly one of the best academic experiences of my life and endowed me with new perspectives into medicine and the incredible research opportunities that exist. Who knows, maybe because of this two-week experience I’ll become a researcher in epigenetics one day. The sky is the limit!
If you have any questions about the program and what it’s like living and studying at Harvard as a pre-college student, feel free to email me at bananiamirali@gmail.com or message me on LinkedIn!
