A Jefferson City High School senior became one of a select few STARS in Missouri over the summer and received an award of excellence in research in the process.
Rakesh Natarajan participated in the six-week Students and Teachers As Research Scientists program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in June and July.
Natarajan was one of 96 high school seniors who went to UMSL, but he was also only one of 32 to receive an award of excellence after presenting the research paper he wrote based on the work he did with Benjamin Bythell, a professor in UMSL's department of chemistry and biochemistry.
The title of Natarajan's paper is "A comparison of the gas-phase structure and fragmentation behavior of singly and doubly-protonated N-terminal analog tetrapeptides by mass spectrometry."
Peptides are chains of amino acids, he explained.
Amino acids are organic compounds containing groups of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. There are about 20 amino acids, and they link together into complex peptide chains to form the proteins that make life possible.
In his research project, Natarajan altered the atomic structure of different types of peptides to give them a positive electrical charge.
"We basically took the particles, we broke them apart, (and) we figured out why they broke that way," all through the use of a mass spectrometer, he said.
The mass spectrometer device charged the particles, then used electric and magnetic fields to separate the particles by mass. Measuring the mass of each kind of particle in a compound creates a map of the substance's chemical signature, a guide to understanding its composition.
Figuring out why a peptide breaks the way it does can help develop a better understanding of how such a molecule functions.
"We can kind of understand a little bit more about those molecules themselves," Natarajan said.
"It's the first time I actually had experience in a lab," he said, adding he would look forward to working in a lab in the future.
"A lot of times in our classes, we get to see things about science in a book. It's very abstract, but working in a lab makes it a little bit more concrete," he said.
He doesn't know yet what he's doing for college next year, but he hopes to go to an Ivy League institution, although he said Stanford University is a favorite, too.
He plans to major in political science or, more likely, medicine - meaning biology on a pre-med track, then getting his M.D. to become a doctor.
"I think that this experience made me a little more committed to wanting to go into science, and more specifically biology. The lab I worked in, even though it's more chemistry-oriented, the work I did was more bio-chem, so I think this experience provided greater ambition," he said.
Whether the paper he wrote gets published is ultimately up to Bythell, his research mentor. The paper was reviewed by a panel of experts from Monsanto, Confluence Life Science, Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and UMSL. They looked for "overall quality based on standards the scientific community uses to determine worthiness for formal publications," according to a news release.
Natarajan said Bythell most likely will take the data from his research in the STARS program and incorporate it into one of his own projects, "but either way, the process of writing a paper was really informative," he said. "It helped essentially make this abstract concept more concrete."
Natarajan's excellence in research award will be presented at a JCHS assembly or a school board meeting, according to the news release.