Home Department: undeclared
Mentor: Julia Kaltschmidt, Neurosurgery

The human body’s second brain, the enteric nervous system (ENS), is an autonomic nervous system that orchestrates digestive processes—especially peristalsis, the movement of the bowel. Rahul will study the impact of transcription factor ETV1 on impairment of peristalsis in mice mutants. He will use a gastrointestinal motility monitor to quantify differences in peristalsis between the colon tissues of new mouse strains in which ETV1 is deleted from specific ENS cell types, thus exploring the contributions of specific ETV-expressing cell populations to overall ENS function.