Angela Grogan
Texas Tech University
Graduate Student/ M.S. Wildlife, Aquatic and Wildland Sciences
Growing up in Durango, Colorado, I was able to experience the best mountain living had to offer with numerous opportunities for hiking, viewing wildlife and camping. For college, I chose to remain in Durango and attend Fort Lewis College, earning a B.S. in Biology in 2018. I moved to Texas thereafter to pursue my M.S. in Wildlife Biology at West Texas A&M University but transferred to Texas Tech University in 2020 to pursue my interest in chronic wasting disease and prion diseases.
My current research project focuses upon genetic susceptibility of pronghorn as well as a variety of exotic cervids and bovids to prion diseases including red deer, sika deer, fallow deer, blackbuck. I am assisting with the validation of a novel biomarker for testing of CWD in native cervids such as white-tailed deer and mule deer. Given the rise of chronic wasting disease in Texas, many of these exotics, as well as pronghorn, often utilize the same or similar habitat to our native, CWD-susceptible cervids, white-tailed deer and mule deer. My goal is to identify other susceptible species through sequencing of the prion protein gene, PRNP, to increase knowledge of prion diseases like CWD.