4th week Blog

Thank you Shiana for an interesting presentation today at journal club. Sorry I did not post a specific place for the 3rd week blog. Thanks to all who posted independently. Please put your 4th week blog here.

Directions for Posters

• Remember there are several audiences for your poster: your peers, your parents, your mentors, and other members of the science community
• Your title should be descriptive of your total experience - please be sure to acknowledge both your mentor and your PI
• Abstract - should contain a topic sentence of about 25 words that describes your summer experience globally. Other elements of the abstract include:
• overview of your internship
• basic background information for your internship
• the part your research contribution plays in the overall research of your mentor and PI
• descriptions of the techniques and methods you used
• your current impressions about biomedical research
• Introduction
• To you as a young scientist – why you did the internship and what were your hopes
• To your project – the people, an overview of the larger study of your mentor and PI and how your work was a part of that study
• Background
• An academic discussion of the importance of your research – including: definition of terms and discussion of concepts related to your project
• Your job is to communicate these concepts and not anticipate that others understand them
• Give your understandings based on your reading and discussions
• Include graphs and tables where appropriate
• Methods
• Techniques that you used in your work
• Why those methods were chosen
• Results
• What is anticipated to be learned from the overall project
• How the internship might shape your future
• Photos and other graphics can be helpful in communicating your learning

BIO5 Tour!

Hi All,

Well, you have your t-shirts, so let's put them to good use on a tour! The day and time that we settled on at the meeting today was Friday, July 6th, at noon. We'll meet in the lobby of the BIO5 Keating building and go from there. Don't forget to bring a lunch, and if you decide to get burritos again let me know so I can get an order in...

-Kevin

Working without Mark....

Working without my direct supervisor, Mark Stevens, seemed to be rather difficult. I would be able to perform procedures without any problems and know what to do in the event of such problems. It's been a real challenge, I admit, trying to remember the recipe for the master mixes for the Has2, Erb2, and HBEGF. There was so much to deal with. I had to write an abstract, and being caffeine-free, it was really, really, really difficult. I guess the caffeine affected my brain, literally, taking over my synaptic regions and replacing dopamine. Ugh....but now moving on. I had to take power naps in order to actually sustain my composure during the day. I guess I'm getting a little burned-out. I shouldn't, though. I really like this internship. I get to work alongside researchers and still hang out with people my age.

It's so difficult to focus now, because I'm getting too used to being an intern. That's the problem. Unlike most people, who focus MORE when they get used to a job, I somehow focus less. That's scaring me, because I really want to do a really good job in this internship. Dr. Camenisch and I are trying to figure out what I can do in order to better my lab experience at their lab, such as more benchwork and less paperwork. This is definitely time to buckle down, especially since it's the last three weeks or less left of the research internship.

I've got an abstract to do. Ugh. Those are definitely not fun. Not fun at all. I don't like them. It's six hundred words of what I did. Well, I guess....six weeks...six hundred words...that comes down to...a hundred words a week easily. So...moving on...I think it'll be slightly easier if I actually write an outline concerning my project and what I did over the summer. I think that's what the project is supposed to be about. Either that or it's supposed to be on my project: Cell Signaling Directing Embryonic Cardiogenesis. Translation: How cells make hearts.

last week in a nutshell!

Hello Mi Amigos!
Translation→ Hello My Friends!

Okay here is one of my infamous quotes!→

“With great power comes great responsibility”
-Ben Parker

Hahaha as some of you guys may have guess yes that quote is form one the best movies known to man! Anyways, my reflection upon last week is a rather blur since it progressed at such a fast pace. Fortunately/Unfortunately, I had to attend my University of Arizona Orientation for incoming freshman last week, which took up two whole days of my life, where I had to sit the majority of the time and listen to people talk about how great this fine institution is.

I came back to the lab after two days without being out of the "loop” and had to play catch up on much needed PCR and DNA Extractions. I jumped right in and started working on what needed to be done without any hesitation... Now looking back on last week a lot of work has been accomplished! Our lab is now getting ready to send off DNA to be sequenced as well as preparing Greg and myself with the knowledge to be able to analyze data that will soon be coming in.

Last weeks journal club went fairly well! Good job Greg and Logan. At the journal meeting we discussed critical issue regarding the end of this internship ☹ as well a possible tour of the BIO5 Institute Building ☺. I am excited since I just checked my e-mail and got confirmation that we will indeed be taking that tour! Okay Amigos I’ll talk to you all later and hoped you enjoyed reading my blog!

-Daniel

Suffering from a really bad case of the Mondays....ugh...

The Camenisch lab is once again busy as I perform my fifth IHC. I keep repeating the same procedure. Being a researcher is very interesting, and working is part of an all-out effort, and not so pleasant jobs. There’s washing dishes (yuck), making cell cultures, removing embryos from the uterus of the mouse, picking up stuff from various parts of the College of Pharmacy, and a few other things. Fortunately, explanting embryos and running errands for my mentors here seem to be of great interest to me, mainly because I prefer dissection and doing stuff for others.

There are several minor procedures that seem to come to light on Mondays. One of them is autoclaving the graduated cylinders, Erlenmeyer flasks, and various other tools of science, such as glass test tubes and bottles. Sterilizing the equipment is very important in order to provide the necessary tools of the trade for the good of science. Failure to do so isn’t an option.

The fifth IHC, so far, only has three slides to be tested with Filamin-1 antibody. Dr. Camenisch seems to have developed an interest in Filamin-1. That is still subject to debate. Maybe it’s because Mark has done so much with MEKK4. But, in all sincerity, I do not know.

Mark is leaving for Washington D.C. tomorrow, and he wants me to possibly perform a DNA extraction from the tail tip digests he’s going to make today and PCR. It’s going to test for MEKK4 so we could add a little relevant color to our projects. Progress has shown over the weeks for sure.

Tiffany: Practice Makes Perfect

Last week I got the opportunity to conduct the last step of protein determination processes on my own. After I had gone through all but the last step of the Western Blot, I was excited to see the results of my experiments and triumphantly show the X-rays of my protein membranes to Gladys. I wanted to make sure that everything in my procedure was correct, so when I was transferring the membranes to the X-ray in the dark room, it took me much longer than usual. I remember looking into the machine many times to see if the X-rays had come out yet. And when they finally did, and I held them up to the light to see the markers, I was superbly...disappointed!!!
There was absolutely nothing at all on the X-rays; even the protein marker that was visible on the membrane itself had not been transferred to the X-ray! I felt like wringing my hands and saying, "NOOOOO!!!!" but luckily I restrained myself. I was extremely sad that all of my work over the past week to prepare the proteins for analysis had been a failure. But now I know that my work was not completely useless; I have learned that science is a trial-and-error process, many times with more errors than true successes. So I will start analyzing my methods to see if I made an error along the way that I did not catch earlier, and fix my mistake the next time I do this process. Even though all my efforts led up to blank X-rays, the good thing about making mistakes is that I will always be acutely aware that everything that I do in each step is so important in leading to a successful result.