CURI Academic Year Student Researcher 26 Kandl

Description

Job Title: CURI Academic Year Researcher

Classification: Student Employee (non-exempt)

Name and Address of Employer: St. Olaf College 1520 St. Olaf Ave Northfield MN 55057

If the position requires the student to work off campus provide the name and address here:

Department Name: CURI

Unit Number (5 digits): 16118

Length of Position: See Employment Authorization

Contact Person/Supervisor: Faculty advisor

Pay Rate (Check One) Standard Hourly Rate x Supervisory/Special Skills Hourly Rate

Description of the Position: (Purpose of the Position): Students work together with a faculty member on scholarly or artistic projects.

Project Title: Manuscript preparation: Media Lacking a Subset of Essential Amino Acids Signal Lipid Droplet Accumulation in Tetrahymena thermophila

Faculty Mentor: Kim Kandl

Project Description: The goal of this project is to prepare a manuscript for publication that describes the work that we have done on the trigger for lipid droplet accumulation in Tetrahymena Thermophila. Lipid droplets are important and dynamic organelles in all cells. Work in our lab has expanded the study of lipid droplets to Tetrahymena thermophila a single-celled freshwater ciliate. Tetrahymena are evolutionarily distant from better studied organisms such as yeast and humans. Similarly to them Tetrahymena accumulate lipid droplets in response to nutrient deprivation. Previous work in our lab demonstrated lipid droplet accumulation in Tetrahymena when cells were moved from a nutrient rich media to 10 mM Tris buffer a media lacking multiple nutrients. However the specific trigger for lipid droplet accumulation in Tetrahymena remained unknown. Thus our lab investigated which missing nutrient is responsible for initiating lipid droplet synthesis. Our results show that when certain amino acids including arginine histidine isoleucine leucine lysine methionine valine tryptophan threonine phenylalanine and serine are dropped out of a synthetic complete media we observe an increase in lipid droplet formation triglyceride accumulation and inhibition of cell division.

Applicants for this project should have completed intermediate genetics (BIO 233) Cell Biology (BIO 227) Biochemistry (CHEM 379) and a previous research course (BIO 297 or 306).

Contact: Kim Kandl Biology Department

Start: February 5 2026

End: May 13 2026

Transferable Skills: Research and presentations.

Duties and Responsibilities: Each project has its own timing (number of hours per week and number of weeks) as determined by the individual faculty mentor. See the CURI Digital Olaf database for individual project descriptions and details.

Qualifications: (Education/Experience/Skills) A student interested in applying for the CURI academic year program must be enrolled as an on-campus St. Olaf student. There is no GPA requirement that must be met in order to apply for the program but a students academic record will be considered during the selection process. Skills are dependent on individual projects.

If you dont have a work award and select No to the application questions your application will be automatically rejected by the system. If you apply and are rejected please contact Erin Eltonga to resolve this for you.

This job description is for general information purposes. It is not intended to list all duties and responsibilities of the job description is subject to change at any time by St. Olaf College with or without prior notice.