Faculty Sponsor: Anne Hart

Mara studied Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a childhood motor neuron disease that affects major muscle groups required for walking, eating, and breathing. SMA affects approximately 1 in 6,000 children and there is no cure. Mara studied this disease in the animal C. elegans, a type of nematode useful for genetic research. She then created transgenic animals and studied their behavior to understand more about the disease process of SMA.