Shiana: Illumination

It seems the longer we’ve all been interns, the closer we’ve all grown. We have gone from arranging to meet at lunch every day to creating our own TV show to even planning weekend get-togethers. Being among a group so interested in research and science in general is wonderful. This past week for me has continued to entail meeting many new faces and making new friends. I have had the chance to talk to UMC interns, Bio Academy interns and its teachers, and a professor, Dr. Karen McGinnis, from the plant sciences department.

While at first the research project that I was to eventually conduct on my own and independently was hard for me to fully comprehend, through asking a great many questions and double-checking concepts (sometimes thrice-checking) with my mentor, I have been able to piece together the big picture of my project as well as what is occurring at the molecular level in every lab procedure that my mentor and I have conducted so far. The terminology that my field of research involves has become easier for me to understand, which helps me immensely in reading through my research papers and additional articles online. I am continuing to do research to find out smaller details about cell processes and the chemicals, proteins, and enzymes involved. My confidence in the lab, now that I have familiarized myself with my surroundings, has increased pleasantly.

My mentor took the time out last weekend to draft a schedule for what I would be occupied with during the rest of my internship and this week was designated for learning technique and reading the principles of procedures and about a variety of other related concepts. This meant that I was to mostly watch my mentor and take careful notes on how things were done. Meanwhile, I was able to learn how to create agarose solutions and adjust buffer concentrations, as well as learn about protein gels (though proteins are not a part of my project). By the time Thursday swung about and we met the second time with Dr. Monks, our lab’s principle investigator, my mentor’s confidence in me had grown and she allowed me to start conducting my experiment by myself ahead of schedule.

As a summary of the beginning of my project, this week my mentor and I prepared our control vector that contained Prx III without any mutation. We also performed mutagenesis of Cys 108 by replacing it with Ser (abbreviated C108S) and C229S using our four mutagenesis primers that we ordered last week. Next week when I take over my project, I will use most of the same methods I saw this week to create three vectors with only C108S and C229S mutations, and then one with both mutations. When we arrive at this point, we will analyze the altered function of Prx III with its double mutations compared to a normal Prx III by putting Prx III back into a live cell.