Molecular Biology Lab Graduates
Director: Ralph Marcucio, PhD, Assistant Professor

Anna Sapozhnikova - Staff Research Assistant

Anna Sapozhnikova was born in Odessa, Ukraine, but since the age of ten was raised in various suburbs of Boston, MA. She attended Bard College; a small liberal arts school tucked away in the woods of upstate New York, and received her bachelor's degree in Psychology, though she completed a comparable amount of credits in the natural sciences.

For the completion of her degree, Anna wrote a senior thesis that examined the effects of cortisol on memory and immune function in zebrafish. This research integrated her interest in psychoneuroimmunology with behavioral and molecular biology and allowed her to independently pursue topics that were otherwise unavailable in the classroom. Using RNA extraction and PCR, she was able to track the activity of a zebrafish interferon (zIFN) gene over time in response to cortisol dosing. Additionally, using a standard T-maze, basic reward principles, and a little help from SPSS, she was able to quantify the effects of cortisol dosing on memory in zebrafish.

Currently, Anna is working at the Orthopedic Surgery Molecular and Cellular Biology Lab at the San Francisco General Hospital. She joined Dr. Ralph Marcucio and his staff only recently and is excited to work closely on the many projects of this diverse lab. In her free time Anna likes to sew, practice yoga, and work on her new hobby of book making.