Student Research at Duke

Although initially it was a little depressing to return to school having been there less than a month before, now that classes have gotten underway and I have returned to the lab I am once again thoroughly enjoying my time at Duke.  My non-science classes this semester are extremely interesting - from a class concerning the leadership and institutional capacity in Africa to an English class analyzing bioethics and narrative.  As for genetics and molecular biology and organic chemistry, despite their bad reputations, I am really enjoying them as well.  The material is quite interesting and the concepts are relevant to the branches of biology that interest me.  Of course, we’ll see how my feelings change after exams begin!

This semester I am also continuing my research in Dr. Wang’s lab as an independent study.  While I am not working on the exact project that I did this summer, I will be assisting my graduate student mentor with his project, which is rather similar to mine.  I really enjoy being able to spend some time in the lab each week, as it is a nice alternative to sitting in lecture and I learn equally as much, if not more.  Well, that’s all for now but I will try to give updates as much as possible throughout the semester!

It’s hard to believe that this research experience is coming to a close.  Although it may sometimes seem like I’ve been passaging cells my entire life, it often feels like I just began my fellowship.  While these eight weeks were far from a typical summer, I would not have spent them any other way.  As is apparent from my previous posts, I absolutely loved my time in the lab and I am excited about continuing my work there during the school year.

I’m not sure I have ever learned so much in eight weeks, as this experience not only taught me about a particular subject in science, but also how to do science.  I learned how frame a scientific question, how to plan an experiment, how to control for variables, and how to make appropriate conclusions from data.  I also learned the importance of never losing sight of the big picture.  It is easy to become wrapped up in one small experiment, and easily frustrated if things are not working out as expected.  However, taking a step back and looking at the big picture can help you to troubleshoot and simply to keep you sane! 

Now that I have begun this project, it seems as though I have opened up a huge can of worms – there are so many more questions that have arisen and I cannot help but want to try and answer them.  While a large part of me would love to just drop everything and fully immerse myself in laboratory research, I know that the undergraduate experience is equally as enjoyable and educational.  I’m sure one day in graduate school I’ll probably wish I were an undergraduate again!  So for now, I am going to rest my brain in preparation for next semester and look forward to supplementing my undergraduate experience with some exciting laboratory work on the side!

As a child, my parents succeeded in occupying me for hours by buying me my own toy microscope.  I have always been interested in science, particularly biology and its medical applications.  Growing up I thought that a career as a doctor would be an exciting way to combine an interest in biology and a desire to help people.  I volunteered at a local hospital in high school and really enjoyed the environment.  However, as I have learned more about the variety of science careers available I have realized that a career in research would also satisfy my passion for biology.  I have always been one to constantly ask questions, and as a scientist I would have the ability to ask, and then attempt to answer, the infinite number of questions that science offers. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience in the lab this summer and I am confident that I would love a career as a scientist.  However, I still feel like I would enjoy the medical environment, especially the direct interaction with those you are assisting.  A combined MD/PhD degree would allow me to combine both the research and clinical aspects of medicine.  More specifically, I feel that the fields of cancer biology and infectious disease are exciting, dynamic fields that could be pursued as a physician scientist.  I hope that in the next few years I can take advantage of additional opportunities to gain experience in both fields and really understand what I am best suited for.

It’s about time that I update everyone on my recent work!  These past few weeks, I have been repeating several experiments in which I study the effects of TGF-b on specific cells through various assays.  These assays have the ability to quantitate TGF-b’s effects on cellular proliferation and migration.  I am working with lentivirus-infected 4T1 cells, which means that the cells have been infected with a retrovirus carrying a vector plasmid of genetic material.  In this case, when the plasmid is transcribed in the host 4T1 cell it yields a strand of RNA that subsequently folds into short hairpin RNA (shRNA).  This shRNA, through a process known as RNA interference (RNAi) has the ability to knock down a designated protein in the cell by binding and degrading the mRNA segment coding for the protein and therefore preventing its translation.  By knocking down specific proteins in the cell through this method, one is able to understand the roles of certain proteins in a cell.  If, for example, a cell knocked down for a specific protein ceases to migrate compared to a control, it can be proposed that the knocked down protein is required for migration.  For my experiments, I am attempting to elucidate the roles of certain proteins involved in the TGF-b signaling pathway and more specifically the pathway that is involved in promoting cellular migration, a key precursor to metastasis in cancer cells.

Thus far, despite about six weeks of nearly fifty hour work weeks, I find myself just as enthusiastic about science as when I started.  I enjoy the infinite amount of unanswered questions that encapsulate science and the freedom, as a scientist, to attempt to answer them.  Each experiment, even when it answers its intended question, opens up an entirely novel area for exploration.  Interested in pursuing similar work as a career, these facts are encouraging – not only does it seem that I will always love what I am doing, but I should also always have something to do!