Student Research at Duke

So this past Friday, our lab found out that a paper submitted last spring was finally accepted to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Neuron. It was quite exciting, as this was a major milestone for the lab. As a result, we celebrated with a mid-day party in our little breakroom. Here are some pics:

^now that’s a celebration! (from L-R, Liberty Hodge, Susan Da Silva)

^Liberty leads Brigid Hogan (our department head) to the party

^CHEERS! (Alex Sanchez, Amanda Wagner, Liberty Hodge, Susana Da Silva, Fan Wang)

^How many PhD students (and PIs) does it take to open a cake? (Liberty, Susana, Fan)

^Liberty cutting the cake

^the aftermath.

The cake was DELICIOUS (a decadent chocolate mousse cake with silky dark chocolate ganache from Whole Foods), and needless to say, we were all very happy and proud to be a part of the lab.

Finally, here’s a brief video of the festivities. (I tried to embed the video as an object, but for some reason, the software won’t let me do it).

After almost 4 weeks in lab, I’ve found that I’ve moved away from the “What am I supposed to do today?” attitude towards more of a “What CAN I do today?” mood. It’s incredible how quickly you can get addicted to research. I find myself dreaming about protocols, coming in on the weekends (by my own free will ), staying until 7 or 8pm, and just getting completely wrapped up in what I’m doing. It’s truly been a great experience, and I definitely would like to continue researching throughout my undergraduate career.

So last week was “Bioethics” week, and though the lectures were interesting, I left the week with the same opinions about bioethics that I’ve always had: that you can’t teach people to be ethical (past a certain point). I mean, if you’re an ethical researcher, you’re not going to make up data. If you’re unethical, as one of my grad student mentor says, you’re just getting even more ideas from these seminars.

Though my opinions haven’t changed, I still think the seminars were really thought provoking. I mean, there are some ethical questions that simply can’t be answered. It’s situations like those that really help put ethics into perspective. I also think that both the lecturers (both McClay and Denny) did a good job of characterizing what ethics in medicine and research actually is.

We also watched a movie (And the Band Played On, 1993) about the AIDS situation in the 1980s and the ethical questions surrounding the whole case. Basically, it comes down to what the cost of saving a life is, whether that’s measured in prominence (Dr. Robert Gallo) or money (corporations, etc.). It could be argued that sometimes a life isn’t worth saving, given the costs. Is it responsible to allow one person to die, in order to save 2 more?

Ethics is an interesting issue, and it definitely plays a part in our everyday decisions, in both our professional and personal lives. Still, I strongly believe that ethics isn’t something that can be acquired. Once you’ve been trained to be (un)ethical, you can’t really change. That’s just my opinion. Any comments?

It just happens that I’m writing this post after completing my second week of research here at Duke University. This week has been pretty hectic, and I haven’t really had time to update. I tried to go back and add in pictures to my previous entry, but for some reason, the software wouldn’t let me update it. Weird.

Anyways, here’s the picture I promised last week:

The picture above is of a embryonic stage 21+ Red-eared Slider Turtle. Though our lab doesn’t specifically study them, Dr. Blanche Capel’s lab in the Cell Biology Department gets a bunch of these little guys each year. They’re interested in sex determination of these turtles (their sex is determined by temperature; above a certain temp, they’re all female, below, they’re all male). But since they’re only looking at sex organs, they have all these left over turtle parts. As such, since I’m studying sensory development in various organisms, I was free to look at the turtle heads that they don’t use. So recently, I’ve been working with turtle heads, in addition to the molecular biology experiments I had already started. And, as such, I’ve been working non-stop, hardly having 20 minutes to eat lunch (I’m even going in tomorrow, Saturday, to finish something up).

Moving on, do you know what I LOVE about science? I love the feeling of having a problem, and working your way through it to find an answer. I honestly believe that science and most things in life, actually, are about the process. Life isn’t about the end result (death), it’s about what you do when you’re alive. The same thing applies to science. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have results and publish a paper as much as the next Howard Hughes Summer Research Fellow , but I take pride in knowing that whatever results I achieve, it’s because of the hard work, long hours, and weird dreams I have about my research (yes, I have dreams about research…. that’s not weird… right? ).

I haven’t really made any major errors in the lab, and some of my work is coming back with decent results. It’s been a long week, and unlike last week, I haven’t really been cooking dinner. Mostly, I’ve been eating out or mooching off of others. Research is no 9-5 job. I come home at random hours and often don’t feel like cooking. It’s good though, since a few of us fellows have just been trading off the cooking responsibility. Each roommate pair will cook about once a week, we can go out once, and there’s always some sort of free food at least once a week. For example, tonight, a bunch of us got together at Lulit and Wendy’s to celebrate Wendy and Upom’s birthdays:

I’m having a blast, both in the lab and out.

So, I’m back at Duke for the summer doing biomedical research as part of the Howard Hughes Research Fellows Program. I wish I could leave a long entry, but it’s getting late, and I need to wake up early to go to the lab.

Overall, it’s been a blast. This first week has gone by so quickly. We’ve had all these events scheduled, and once I got back into the research-y mood, time spent in lab quickly faded away. I’ve having fun cooking for myself and others, and the people I’ve met are all really interested in what they do. It’s such a great community to be a part of.

Anyways, let’s talk some science. I’m in Dr. Fan Wang’s lab in the Cell Biology department and am studying the development of the facial somatosensory system in embryonic organisms. One of my grad student mentors in the lab has already looked at this development in mice, so now, I’m looking at the same development in Chicken embryos, and as of Tuesday, Turtle embryos. Here’s a pic of an embryonic turtle (sans head…): actually, i can’t really figure out how to add in a pic using this blogging software, but i’ll play around with it soon!

Anyways, research is interesting, residential life is good, our schedules are packed, and the free housing is decent. There are a few quirks here and there, but i’ll be sure to address those in a future post. thanks for reading, and goodnight!