Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

12-2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

W.M. Keck Science Department

Second Department

Neuroscience

Reader 1

Aaron Leconte

Reader 2

Wei Jiang

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2026 Kaitlyn Kong

Abstract

Neurodegenerative diseases remain among the most pressing medical challenges, with their progression strongly influenced by cellular vulnerability to stress. It is known that environmental stressors, such as extreme elevated temperatures, lead to heat stress that destabilize protein structures and disrupts membrane fluidity. To cope with this, cells rely on the heat shock response (HSR), in which onset of stress triggers adaptive pathways to aid in protein folding and increase cell resilience. However, HSR not only enhances thermal resistance but also confers cross tolerance to non thermal stimuli. While protein-level aspects of HSR are well established, mechanisms by which other biomolecules respond to heat stress, and how these changes impact cell survival, remain poorly understood. Lipid droplets (LDs) have emerged as important organelles for maintaining homeostasis. Although LD accumulation is an observable hallmark of many neurodegenerative models, the mechanisms governing LD remodeling in healthy cells are largely unexplored. Here, we investigate how heat stress affects LD dynamics and cell viability in vitro and in vivo. We observed that heat stress induces a downregulation of LDs across species and cell types. This downregulation is associated with improved membrane integrity and increased survival, where acetyl-CoA carboxylase inhibitor, 5-(Tetradecyloxy)-2-furoic acid (TOFA) treatment protects against heat-induced damage. Collectively, this work suggests that lipid droplet downregulation is a mechanistic response to cellular stress with broad implications for enhancing cellular resilience against both thermal and nonthermal stressors that lead to neurodegenerative pathologies.

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Available for download on Monday, December 06, 2027

This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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