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Mayuri Sridhar, 17, of Kings Park, submitted a biochemistry project to the Intel Science Talent Search with a computer model exploring the mechanism by which mutations of protein p53 lead to a loss of its cancer suppressing function. Her work indicates that the mutation of a single amino acid causes p53 to fold into a different stable conformation that is not conducive to DNA binding. She also proposed a three-dimensional structure for the mutant version of p53. Her research may lead to better methods for diagnosing cancer through computational simulation. The daughter of Sridhar Vijayaraghavan and Gayathri Sridhar, Mayuri is a senior at Kings Park High School where she is captain of the math team, active in the French and National Honor Societies, and is a multiple award winner. Mayuri spent two summers taking classes in the art of problem solving and has played the flute for the past six years. She can speak both Tamil and French fluently, and she placed in the top ten in the National French Exam. She believes that "computer modeling is the future of drug discovery" and hopes to study math, computer science and biochemistry in college.
Learn about more Intel STS 2013 finalists.
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