Courtney Deck
Courtney is now doing an MSc with Dr Pat Walsh at the University of Ottawa
Education
4th year Undergraduate
B.Sc. Hons. Zoology, University of Guelph
Research
There are three different functional types of muscle within salmonid fish: cardiac, slow skeletal (or red muscle), and fast skeletal (or white muscle). Slow skeletal muscle contains numerous capillaries and receives high concentrations of oxygen, making it ideal for sustained swimming, while fast skeletal muscle contains fewer capillaries and is used for short periods of anaerobic activity. All three muscle types are reliant on the troponin complex (TnT,TnC and TnI) to enable contraction although the molecular forms of these proteins within each muscle type are diverse.
It has been determined that the genomic DNA of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) contains multiple isoforms of TnI corresponding to fast and slow skeletal muscles and one corresponding to cardiac muscle. My research has involved using PCR to determine the expression of the various isoforms of TnI within the three muscle types of adult Atlantic salmon. I am now applying these techniques to the cardiac muscle of thermally acclimated rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in order to investigate any alterations that occur at the molecular level when the fish are exposed to various environmental temperatures.