Alexandra Salem was awarded the Summer Undergraduate Research Fund award for her project described below:

Patients with Rett syndrome (RTT) are at increased risk of anesthesia-related complications usually involving respiratory insufficiency or cardiac arrythmia.  Preliminary results suggest this phenotype is recapitulated in a mouse model of RTT where delivery of injectable or volatile anesthetic results in cardiorespiratory failure at doses well tolerated in control mice.  Based on this, the goals of my SURF project are to determine in RTT mice i) the minimum level of anesthetic needed to induce unconsciousness and ii) test the susceptibility cardiorespiratory failure in this model in response to two commonly used general anesthetic with different putative modes of action.

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