Independent Study: Cognitive Disorders Lab Research
First of all, I'd like to start out by saying what an amazing oppurtunity being here for roughly the past three weeks. I've enjoyed meeting all these new people and learning about what they do in a lab setting. Even though, a lot of my time was spent watching, I'm grateful that I was able to see experiments and even before some of my own (even though they weren't perfect). Today in the lab, I did a lot of slide labeling which wasn't easy! There were roughly around 40 different types of codes and there needed to be 25 slides for each code. 3/25 slides for every type had to be specially labeled (I will insert pictures below). The entire process took about 3.5-4 hours and my hands were very tired and cramping up! After we labeled the slides, we followed the rest of the protocol (see below). Today I was able to 'float' around the labs and see what everyone was doing. Some people were doing PCR (explained in my previous blog posts) and I was watching them do it until lunch. It was nice that I already had an idea of what was going on, yet I chose to ask some questions along the way to ensure that I understood what was going on Everyone seemed to be diving into their work by performing or their own experiments or working at their own computers. I asked Paul (who did all of his training with me and is also very new to the lab enviorment) about his project that he's working on over the summer. He said he was working with NR1 knockout in neuroendothelial tissue. After talking to Dr. Mccullumsmith about possible things to do this summer, he thought that this sounded the most interesting and manageable. While working in the lab is not a requirement for residencies, having research experience and publications makes you a more competitive applicant and this is what he plans to gain by being here. His favorite part about being in the lab is working with several different people and learning new techniques. However, his least favorite part about the experience was the overall training (yet he claims that even though it was quite boring, it was very much needed).
Yesterday at the meeting, we discussed the topic of what's been going on for the past few weeks. I decided to put all of this information into a seperate blog post because it will be more relevant to what I will be doing today. To sort of simplify what was my overarching mission of being here: I needed to decided whether I liked being in the lab. While that's a simple way of putting it, I am able to gain insight of how I would like to move foward in the future. Since the past few weeks have been somewhat all training based and essentially just familiarizing myself in the lab, I haven't really had the chance to dive in deeper into what does interest me about working in the lab. As everyone would breifly describe their project and their current updates, at the end they asked me to pick a project and read over a review paper. I picked the project that dealt with cancer in patients with schizophrenia. I was emailed the article and I read it today. I analyzed the reading before I discussed what I read with the person who was in charge of the project. Today, I was also able to do some brain sectioning, which is basically slicing parts of the brain and putting them on slides. What was very nice about this, was the fact that I was dealing with human tissue that would be later used for experiments. I have been mostly working with scrap tissue which basically means that I was working with stuff that wouldn't matter if it got messed up and wouldn't be used in future experiments. So, I thought it was really cool that I would have the chance to do something like that.
Below I have listed some of the most important take aways (part of my notes) from the review paper: BACKGROUND:
PREVALENCE AND LIFE EXPECTANCY
STUDY COMPARISONS
THEORIES
ep Bhrenia:schizophrenia: Today was more of a relaxed day and was working with Sophie on her project. The morning part of the day was spent aloquatting, which is essentially labeling the tubes and pipetting a substance into them. So on the top of these small tubes I would write the substance (in this case it was called 'DAPI'. On the side I would write how much of the substance, the concentration, and the date. I've done aloquatting before (mentioned in a previous blog post), but it did take quite a while for I had to write carefully to my handwriting to be legible on such a small tube. The second part of the day I was watching her do amino flouresence. She explained that she was basically staining different proteins against different backgrounds to test for GFAB which is an astrocyte marker. *She ran into some problems and is going to have to redo parts of it tomorrow (I don't exactly know what happened)
After watching her do the process, we had our weekly lab meeting when the whole neuroscience department comes togther to talk about what they've been doing. They go around in a circle and share what they did today or the past few days and what they will be planning on doing. Since the majority of the people that I'm working with are students, they inform the chair and the other PIs (a principal investigator; holder of an independent grant and the lead researcher for the grant project) about the current status of their projects and recieve feedback. I also did a survey on Mackenzie to see what she thought about working in the lab. She's investigating the KEOPS complex in relation to telomere maintenance and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Her lead is from Dr. O'Donovan, who has a few projects that are ongoing. Of the projects she leads Mackenzie was most interested in the MDD study. She plans on doing lab work for the next few years while she work on her PhD. Her favorite thing about the lab is that it has the environment that makes it easy to learn. Asking questions and seeking help from other students, lab techs, our manager, and PIs is encouraged. They come together and help in each others' projects which makes for an environment that fosters growth. Her least favorite part of working in the lab is rather small. They are currently working out of two labs due to the size and it can be inconvenient if she's in the middle of an experiment and has to pause to go grab something from the other lab. Today I was not in the lab because they had the day off. For this reason, I decided to check in with my on school mentor and discuss my progress. With my time in the lab finishing up next week, I had to reflect on my goals that I had previously said I would work on and achieve by doing this intensive. One of my goals that I am seeing a notable difference are my communication skills. While at first, I was quite timid and afraid to ask questions, I've moved towards a point where I am more comfortable interacting with others in the lab. Besides looking back on my goals, I also was brain storming ways to wrap up everything that I have learned in the past 3 weeks. It's a little overwhelming that I will have to try and present something in a way that people that have or more likely won't have all the scientific background in order to understand something that is quite complex. While it took me a few days to wrap my mind around these concepts, I need to find a way to be able to condense all of that information into a short presentation. So, I started coming up with different ideas and are probably going to go back to my mentor to find the most efficent way of dealing with this.
Aside from finishing the western blot and analyzing my data, I thought it would be interesting to see what others are doing in the lab and what they enjoy/dislike about being there. I tried to keep my questions short, so that I wouldn't distract anyone from therir work. I thought that this was important to gain insight and another perspective and sort of compare it to what I was thinking.
Sophie- Sophie mostly works with RNA within postmortem human brain. She uses various fluorescent protocols to identify different types of neurons (interneurons, astrocytes, pyramidal neurons, etc.). She has always been interested in the brain and her project allows her to work within a field that she find fascinating. However, she does not plan on doing lab research long term. She hopes to transition more into the medical sciences and work with patients. Working in a lab was not a requirement for her plan, but it is a way to expand her scientific background. Although there are different projects going on ranging from working with cellular RNA, across to proteins, there is some overlap amongst the groups and it really requires us to work together as a cohesive team which is her favorite thing about working in the lab. On the other hand, she doesn't like the fact that sometimes things are slower paced making them unable to run a lot of experiments, so she'll have to spend more time doing computer work. Alyssa- Her project is looking at certain enzymes in post-mortem brain tissue from patients who were depressed who committed suicide and seeing how the findings compare to patients who did not commit suicide or who were not depressed. She is interested in doing lab work in the future because she likes contributing to furthering medical knowledge, but she does not think that she will work in the lab as a future physician because she'd rather spend her time seeing patients in the clinic. Her favorite thing about working in this lab is the level that everyone socializes with each other. She has previously worked in some labs where nobody really wants to talk to each other or be friends which creates sort of a sad environment to be in. She has also worked in labs where the PI is only in the office once every couple of weeks making it really hard to progress on things in an environment like that. For that reason, she likes this lab much better because you can always ask others for help and everyone seems to genuinely like each other. The only complaint about the lab itself is the lack of desk space for everyone to have their own desk. However, that's such a minor issue. Besides that, she really can't think of anything else at this time. Today, I did more steps to the western blotting, but that will be explained in a future blog post, For this post, I'm explaining a topic what we discussed during one of our meetings. The topic was work-life balance, which is your effectiveness as a human being due to our decision making (essentially how well you know yourself). While that's one of the easier ways to put it, there are a lot of factors that come in play. There are structured parts such as sleep hygiene, diet, enviorment, organization, fitness/excercise. On the other hand there are unquantifiable (unstructured) parts such as your wants/needs, anxietyt/fear, fear of failure, and external pressures. In order to be have a good work-life balance.
They discussed an excercise called the bulleyes values. In this excercise you are given a bullseye and in the middle you put down all of the people who would like to spend the most time with and then in the next ring you put people who are still important to you, but not your go to. After you fill one out, based on your feelings, you complete another one based on who you actually spend your time with and compare the results. If these two do not match up, it's an easy way to tell that you do not have a balance and should reevaluate your choices. Today, we did Gel Electrophoresis and I've posted the steps that we used. Gel electrophoresis is a procedure that seperates DNA by size and charge. You essentially put our samples into wells (which are little holes in the gel) and run a current through the gel to pull them. Because DNA fragments are negatively charged, the move towards the positive side. Shorter DNA fragments are able to migrate more quickly in the gel than the larger ones, which is why when you stain the gel, you are able to determine the length of the DNA segement.
As I mentioned in my Day 5 blog post, I did the first step in doing a western blot (a technique that detects and analyzes specific proteins). In order to do the Western Blot, I needed to determine the total amount of protein (which is what I did yesterday; The BCA assay). My results were inaccurate because I had mixed up two tubes (one contained the buffer and the other contained the mixture that I was supposed to use). From this, I realized that I need to keep better track of all of the materials that I'm working with. While no one else had labeled their tubes, I am thinking that for the next experiment, I will label them to avoid having another issue like that. Luckily, there were other BCA models and they showed us how to put all of the data in the computer Today's goal was to do Western Blot bootcamp. We were planning on doing it all the way, but the schedule got shifted and this resulted in spliting it into 2-3 days. The entire morning we spent doing BCA assay and then the afternoon was spent looking at our results. From our results, it turns out that something went wrong during the process, and because of it, we will be unable to use it if we want to get accurate results. I am planning on redoing this tomorrow and will explain more about what a Western Blot is and the procedure.
I chose to do this independent study in order to see if I would like to somehow be involved in Lab Research when I'm older and from roughly now a week in the Lab, I've come to realize that this is probably not the route I'm taking. This is conflicting, due to the fact that it could be that I'm overwhelmed with the information (and constantly have to ask questions) or the fact that everyone around me has somewhat of a higher education when it comes to this and is intimidating me. While I am enjoying learning about these certain topics and a week is not enough to determine whether or not I would like to continue doing in the future, I am excited to see what will come of the next two weeks. |
Welcome to my first independent study!
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