Krystal N. Onatolu
3rd year medical student
Cellular & Molecular Biology
5th year of MSTP

EDUCATION

• B.S. 2004, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Biochemistry

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002-2004
  Advisor - Edward Roy, PhD
  Project - investigating the best way to transplant adaptive t-cells into mammals that have brain tumors without competing with native t-cells
• Washington University, Summer 2002
  Advisor - Virginia Miller, PhD
  Project - helped discover Klebsiella pneumoniae virulent gene, wecA, by performing intranasal inoculations, prgn disections, PCR and recombinant DNA experiments of pH on E. coli transcriptional regulation
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001-2002
  Advisor - John Cheeseman, PhD
  Project - interactions of enzymes nitrate reductase and nitrite reductase that catalyze the reaction of changing nitrate and nitrite in plants into useful glutamate

PUBLICATIONS

• Pollard AM, Onatolu KN, Hiller L, Haldar K, Knoll LJ. Highly polymorphic family of glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored surface antigens with evidence of developmental regulation in Toxoplasma gondii. Infect Immun 76(1):103-110, 2008. PMID: 17938221

PRESENTATIONS

• “The Role of wecA in the virulence of Klebsiella Pneumoniae.” Presented at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, 2002.