I am Alexandra Nicole Canlas, a senior Psychology student at Old Dominion University. I still remember the time when I memorized all the bones in the basic human skeletal system when I was just in third grade. From then, my interest in the human anatomy flourished and it never stopped. Now that I am more capable, I want to learn the human body in the microscopic level. My interest in studying cell biology stems from me finding ways to improve human health. Understanding how things work in a smaller scale would help me see the bigger picture on how the body operates and how things correlate.

My main goal is to enter medical school, however, I am also interested in pursuing graduate school for health psychology with a focus in physiology. If my endeavors in the medical field will be successful, my focus will be on different protein sources, how they differ in their effects on cell functions and whether they have significant differences in the overall health of cells. This topic interests me specifically due to the increasing amount of people following the vegan diet. It is a fact that plant-based protein and animal-based protein consists of different amino acids, however, not a lot of studies focus on their effects on the changes in cell signaling and cell structure. I am looking forward to gaining knowledge on the biological processes related to certain signaling pathways to understand this topic better.

Furthermore, my main focus for this semester will be to know how a plant-based protein (wheat gluten, soy) source affects the mTOR signaling pathways and how it affects B-cell function. How different are the effects compared to proteins obtained from animals such as casein and whey? I will be studying the mTOR signaling pathway specifically because it is involved in numerous processes such as B-cell and T-cell development. Those cells play a huge part in a person’s immune system. I am hoping that by studying cells in-depth would provide more knowledge and understanding on protein functions and signaling pathways.