Mary Muckey, M.S.

She/her

Education: Bachelor of Science in animal sciences and industry (May 2015)

Master of Science in grain science from Kansas State University

McNair Project: Effect of anti-inflammatory drug sodium salicylate on fatty acid or LPS induced cellular stress of mammary gland epithelial cells (2014)

Mentor: Scott Beyer, Ph.D.

Sodium salicylate (SS) has been widely used as an anti-inflammatory drug, and is thought to act in part by mitigating stress within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). To initiate cellular stress, palmitic acid (PALM) and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) were used. We hypothesized that SS would have a protective effect against PALM and LPS treatment in mammary gland epithelial (MAC-T) cells. In the first experiment there were 4 treatments: control, SS (50 μM), PALM (250 μM), and their combination. Treatments were applied during a 24-h incubation before analysis of apoptosis with TUNEL assay. In the second experiment, MAC-T cells were treated with control, SS (50 uM), low or high doses of LPS (50 μM and 100 μM), or in combination of SS with low or high doses of LPS. First, SS was applied, then after 5 min, LPS was applied to MAC-T cells. After 24 h of treatment, RNA was isolated and reverse transcribed to cDNA for quantitative real-time PCR analysis of transcript abundance of both IRAK1 (p< 0.05) and NRF2 (p <0.01), two genes that are activated in response to inflammation or oxidative stress. Surprisingly LPS did not significantly induce IRAK1 transcript abundance and it decreased abundance of NRF2 (p< 0.05). Overall, SS had a limited protective effect on stressed MAC-T cells.