Southwest Metroplex Center
Tarleton graduate
lauded
Alumna of Tarleton’s Fort Worth campus earns research award
M
anashree Prajapati is an
example of the quality of
students being fostered at
the Tarleton State University campus in Fort Worth.
Prajapati, a recent Tarleton graduate,
was recognized earlier this year for her
research thesis, which focused on cholesterol’s influence on the healing of chronic
wounds.
Prajapati completed her thesis, titled
“The Effects of Cholesterol Carrier
Proteins and Statin on Fibroblast Migration and Signal Transduction via Sterol
Regulatory Element Building Proteins
(SREBP) – 2,” last August. For her work
the Conference of Southern Graduate
Schools (CSGS) awarded her its 2014 Master’s Thesis Award for Life Science.
Prajapati became the first Tarleton student to do a master’s thesis for the school’s
medical laboratory science program and
the first to win an award for her research.
“I was so shocked. I never expected it,”
she says. “I’m really happy that I was the
first one from Tarleton to get this award.”
Prajapati was recognized at the CSGS
annual meeting in San Antonio in February. Her professor and mentor, Dr. Dale
Telgenhoff, encouraged her to submit her
work for consideration.
“I think it was a good sign that she
really researched the topic thoroughly and
did a good job coming up with it,” says
Telgenhoff, who is graduate studies advisor, histotechnology program director and
associate professor at Tarleton.
Dr. Telgenhoff already was doing broad
research on wound healing that looked at
cholesterol signaling in the cell (or how
cholesterol helps proteins communicate
with each other).
Dr. Telgenhoff says Prajapati decided
to focus on a specific area within his research for her master’s thesis – a family of
proteins called Sterol Regulatory Element
Binding Proteins–2 (SREBP-2). These
proteins regulate the production of cells
and encourage fibroblasts to grow and
multiply. Fibroblasts are cells in connective tissue that produce collagen and other
fibers and that play an essential r