Student Research at Duke

Today was the poster session, which marked the conclusion of our 8-week program. This will be my last post but I wanted to wrap things up and reflect upon my experience this summer. This was probably one of the best summers I have had! It’s been great to experience Duke in a way separate from the normal hustle and bustle of college academics. I feel like working in the research laboratories gives you a place you belong to or a reason to love Duke even more. I loved that I was engaged in something very intellectually stimulating but also had the opportunity to meet peers with interests similar to my own. I met a lot of really cool people, heard a lot of great seminars on a variety of topics, and got to work with so many knowledgeable people fascinated by science. It is inspiring to be surrounded by all of that. After getting results from the confocal and seeing all the pictures and graphs on my poster, I felt like all the hard work paid off. I am excited to continue my research in the same lab as an independent study in the fall. There is still a lot more to be done- it just makes you realize how short 8-weeks really is when it comes to science research.

I thoroughly enjoyed the poster session we had today. Having people who wanted to hear about my work was thrilling. Also, hearing feedback and being questioned by other PIs with a background in my topic really made me think about certain things that could be improved upon or further experiments that could be done. Below are some pictures from the poster session of my fellow Howard Hughes-ers and myself:

Me, Dean Nijhout, Andrew, and Sarah gearing up for the poster session.

Kristin and I were poster neighbors- we both had a blast!

Andrew and I waiting for the poster session to start.

Cat, my roommate, and I.

Priya and I taking a glance at other posters.

Kristin, Racquel, and I.

Jackie, Kristin, and I ready to present our research!

I have one last bit of lab photos to share.

My desk is on the right.

The lab bench I work at.

Vibratome slicing machine that I use to slice mice brains.

The hood

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Electrophysiology recording setup that our lab uses.

Possibly the sweetest shirts ever. Our whole lab got them. I’m probably going to wear it every day for the rest of the summer.

So fitting for our lab.

As I am sitting here making my poster, I realized that I have not yet blogged about career considerations. Coming to Duke, I was (and still am) pre-med and very much interested in the biological sciences. I had always been pretty certain that I was going to medical school and hoped to somehow find out if I would like pediatric oncology or pediatric neurology/neurosurgery. My first lab research experience was the summer after my junior year through Boston University High School Summer Research Internship Program where I conducted neural stem cell research. It was a great introduction to the life of a research scientist and I realized there were so many different fields to choose from based on your own intellectual curiosity. This Howard Hughes Research Fellowship reminded me again that I do enjoy going into lab to find the answer to my project. Especially now towards the end, I am getting results and compiling data, which makes it all the more exciting. One thing I realized during this program is that research is a slow process full of errors and days of troubleshooting, which can be frustrating. But the excitement when you finally do get data is well worth the effort. This has prompted me to definitely consider an MD/PhD program. I still have time to decide whether an MD/PhD is for me- a decision I know many people in this program are considering- but I know that I will pursue a career in the sciences. For now, I definitely intend to continue science research throughout my undergraduate career. But as for the near future, I must go work on my poster, which I have to admit is a lot of fun to put together. Wow, eight weeks really is a lot shorter than I had expected.

…you dream about nuclear stains. When I closed my eyes last night, I saw blue Hoechst stained nuclei on the back of my eyelids. That may be due to the fact that I basically live in the confocal microscope room now.

For the first few weeks, I had major problems seeing my fluorescence in the confocal microscope. The microscope isn’t supposed to work miracles; you have to be able to see the image through the eyepieces before you take a picture of the image. My problem was that the GFP (green) and tomato (red) fluorescence was dull so I couldn’t really see my cells. The only thing I could see was the Hoechst nuclear stain (blue). I learned that it is quite difficult to image and it takes much longer than it is supposed to when the fluorescence is dull. It feels like you’re looking for something that isn’t there; thus, it was difficult to even find the dorsal lateral, dorsal medial, and ventral parts of the striatum quickly. Another thing I had to check for was bleedthrough in the channels. I had to make sure that the blue channel was not bleeding through to the red and the green and the same for the other channels. I did not want to get false positive signals and analyze them incorrectly.

This is when I truly learned that science research goes quite slowly because of all the unexpected issues and troubleshooting that needs to be done. My mentor and I brainstormed about what sorts of issues could have caused this decreased fluorescence (which used to be quite bright). The main issue was whether it was a problem in the fixation/processing of the tissue or if it was a problem with the biology in the animal. We headed to the epifluorescence microscope to take a look at our samples. One of the guys in the lab upstairs looked at our slides and mentioned that it seemed as if our slices were uneven- thinner at the top and thicker at the bottom. The postdoc I’m working with said that even if the fluorescent signal is dull, the cells should still look healthy; instead, our cells looked unhealthy, prompting him to think that it was a slicing issue. It occurred to us that our vibratome was having issues and was significantly affecting people’s results. As soon as we got it fixed, our fluorescence has been much brighter!

I have gone back to the confocal to image the new slices. However, the Zeiss 410 confocal that I have been using is becoming obsolete because there is a new confocal, the Zeiss 510. The Zeiss 410 confocal scans a little off- the top of my blue channel for my nuclear stain is bright but it dims as it continues scanning to the bottom, so I have a hard time adjusting the brightness and contrast to an appropriate level. Thus, I will be training to use the Zeiss 510 on Monday (the earliest training date available because they are backed up with all the new users). Then, I will need to count my cells and look at colocalization.

I definitely have my plate full for the next two weeks. I know there will be many hours spent in front of the confocal. In addition, I have been learning to clip the toes of my mice and genotype them for my project.

The Zeiss 510 confocal that I will be using shortly.

On Tuesday, our lab took a day off from lab and spent a day at the Eno River. It was so much fun- conclusion: scientists DO know how to have fun! We went “wafting” which means we paddled in our inflatable kayaks down the river and listened to the tour guide give us advice on how to get in tune with nature. It was very relaxing. When we got to the swimming hole, we all climbed across the slippery rocks to swim around in the swimming hole. Then we headed back. The tour guide said that the “winners” of the wafting tour were those who knew how to relax and enjoy nature- those who arrived back at the dock last were the winners. Ying, a grad student in my lab, and I decided to float all the way back, so we got back a lot later than everyone else- well, we also got out at the wrong place and pulled our kayaks onto the trail and then realized that we were not at the correct dock. Nevertheless, we were definitely the “winners”. The upside- they carried our kayaks back to the meeting area; the downside- everyone else had already started eating the food.
We had a potluck-type picnic. The food was DELICIOUS. Everyone brought in some of their favorite dishes: we had grape leaves and tzadziki, tandoori chicken, samosas, shanghai noodles, hummus and pita bread, and strawberry pie. After lunch, we played croquet. I had never played croquet before but it was a lot of fun playing it with my lab. I got fourth….out of four people!

It was a great way to get to know the people in my lab better. Everyone in my lab has funny idiosyncracies that I would not have found out about otherwise- I couldn’t ask for a better bunch of people to hang out with for 8 hours a day!

Ying (left) is a grad student in the lab. Meng (right) is a postdoc who I am working directly with. Meng’s a lot of fun to work with. Now that we’ve gotten to know each other, we know that we both love food, so we often talk about what kind of foods we’re craving.

Viren and Yehong “wafting”. Viren is the other undergrad in the lab; he’s a year older than I am.

On the left is my PI Nicole and across from her is her son Tyler in the dinosaur costume. He was hilarious- he showed up in a dinosaur costume and didn’t want to take it off even though it was really hot outside. Behind them are David, our lab tech, and his son Nathan.

Me, Nicole, and her son getting ready to play croquet.

Viren, Audrey (our new lab tech), David, and his son playing croquet.