Kristin Russell

Graduate Student - Leavnt Lab
B.S. in Biological Sciences, University of Missouri-Rolla

I've lived across the country but for the last ten years I've called Missouri home.  I graduated from a small rural high school in southeast Missouri in 2003 and from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 2007 with a B.S. in biological sciences.  During my undergraduate career I had several summer internships, the first being in 2005 at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, ME.  The summers of 2006 and 2007 I spent in St. Louis, MO as an intern for Pfizer, Inc in the Global R&D Division.  I have always liked science but narrowed my interests to pharmacology after my internships at Pfizer, Inc.  I came to KUMC primarily because of the great track record of producing successful, well-rounded pharmacologists and toxicologists.

Research Interests 

As a graduate student in Dr. Beth Levant's lab, I am interested in how the outcome of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) is affected by the fatty acid composition of the brain.  The fatty acid our lab is particularly interested in is docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).  DHA is a polyunsaturated fatty acid most abundantly found in fish oil; it is also the most abundant omega-3 fatty acid found in the brain.  The amount of DHA in the brain can be modified by altering the amount of DHA in the diet.  Under damaging and inflammatory conditions, such as TBI, DHA is cleaved from neuronal membranes and is metabolized into multiple anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic signaling molecules.  Knowing the full relationship between DHA and brain injuries could lead to novel therapeutic strategies to improve the outcomes of TBI.