Student Research at Duke

I am sincerely grateful, both to the Howard Hughes Research Fellowship and to the Kuehn lab, for allowing me the opportunity to conduct research this summer.  My work over the past two months has confirmed for me my passion for biochemistry and for medical research.  And, of course, I have learned an incredible amount.  The techniques and terms with which I have become familiarized will no doubt aid me in the future, and experiencing the realities and dynamics of a lab environment has been just as, if not more, beneficial.  Thank you.

This happens more than I feel most people realize.  You wait for samples to defrost, for the cells to incubate for 1, 3, or even 6 hours, for the PCR machine to become available (this can take several days).  I can list more instances, but I am sure you get my point:  Doing research, you tend to wait a lot.

For the record, I am not complaining.  After all, what better time to pick up your prescription, go to the bank, take a walk, read, eat, etc. than in a 6 hour period when your only task is to do nothing?  Of course, there is the downside that 6 hour incubation periods tend to come with early mornings and late evenings at the lab, if that is the sort of thing that bothers a person.  But I have no problem with it.  Besides, its nothing compared to lysing cells for 3 hours straight.  And on that note, maybe there is another tidbit about research that most people do not know: you can pipet so hard that you get a blister.  Not pleasant, I know, but at least I warned you.

These past few weeks I have mostly been exposing LA-4 and RAW cells (both taken from mice, which I do not believe I had previously mentioned) to the outer membrane vesicles/purified lipopolysaccharide of cystic fibrosis (CF) strains of P. aeruginosa.  Lipopolysaccharide, or LPS as it is commonly abbreviated, is a major component of this bacterium’s outer membrane, therefore making it a major component of its outer membrane vesicles; it also happens to be an endotoxin, which will elicit an immune response in normal cells.  We are observing immune response to both CF strain vesicles and LPS in the LA-4 and RAW cells in order to determine if a) LPS is solely responsible for any immune response or b) the vesicles themselves play a role in the pathogenicity of this bacterium.  If the latter option is supported by our data we may be, at the very least, another step closer to curing the deadly lung infections suffered by CF patients.