James Conklin is a fourth year, Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology (B.S.) major at UC Santa Cruz. His project seeks to investigate the connection between the secondary structure of amyloid beta and its toxicity as a possible mechanism for AD pathology. He will be specifically be looking at a variant of amyloid beta that has been shown to alter the conformation of amyloid beta aggregates in vitro. He uses Drosophila that have been genetically altered to express human amyloid beta as my AD model organism.