Graduate Student Researcher
West Virginia University
State: WV
About
Jaelyn Current is a graduate of the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio. She received her Bachelor of Science with a dual major in Animal Science and Biology and a minor in Chemistry while maintaining a 3.69 GPA. After undergrad, she decided she would be more well suited for a life of research rather than veterinary medicine and following graduation, she moved to Front Royal, Virginia.
In Virginia, she worked as a Cheetah Intern with the Smithsonian Conservation Biological Institute in their Wildlife Reproductive Endocrinology lab. As an intern, she performed ELISAs (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent assays) on fecal samples to map estrous cells and plot pregnancy profiles of captive cheetahs across the country. Her data has contributed to an ongoing study whose goal is to better characterize female reproductive cycles in captive cheetahs and will ultimately help to conserve wild feline species.
After a year of working as an intern, she then decided graduate school was her next step and was awarded the Provost Fellowship at West Virginia University where she works in a functional genomics laboratory under her major adviser, Dr. Jianbo Yao. His lab focuses on discovering novel oocyte-specific genes and determining their functional contributions to early embryonic development in cattle. It is under his watchful eye she will be conducting novel research in the field of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and their roles in early embryonic development. Her goal is to use novel oocyte-specific lncRNAs as an indicator of oocyte quality. In the future, she hopes to identify and characterize lncRNAs that play crucial roles in early embryonic survival. Ultimately, she hopes to develop a method to use lncRNAs as genetic markers to select the oocytes of the highest quality to produce the healthiest and highest quality offspring per cow.
In Virginia, she worked as a Cheetah Intern with the Smithsonian Conservation Biological Institute in their Wildlife Reproductive Endocrinology lab. As an intern, she performed ELISAs (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent assays) on fecal samples to map estrous cells and plot pregnancy profiles of captive cheetahs across the country. Her data has contributed to an ongoing study whose goal is to better characterize female reproductive cycles in captive cheetahs and will ultimately help to conserve wild feline species.
After a year of working as an intern, she then decided graduate school was her next step and was awarded the Provost Fellowship at West Virginia University where she works in a functional genomics laboratory under her major adviser, Dr. Jianbo Yao. His lab focuses on discovering novel oocyte-specific genes and determining their functional contributions to early embryonic development in cattle. It is under his watchful eye she will be conducting novel research in the field of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and their roles in early embryonic development. Her goal is to use novel oocyte-specific lncRNAs as an indicator of oocyte quality. In the future, she hopes to identify and characterize lncRNAs that play crucial roles in early embryonic survival. Ultimately, she hopes to develop a method to use lncRNAs as genetic markers to select the oocytes of the highest quality to produce the healthiest and highest quality offspring per cow.
Projects
| GNE19-196 | Characterization of Novel Long Non-coding RNAs and Their Roles as Indicators of Oocyte Quality in Cattle |