Student Research at Duke

I don’t think I could have had a more enjoyable experience this summer working and learning. Being in a lab is like being in another world–it’s quite cut off from the realities outside, but the things you investigate are very real.

After completing the poster, I’m very pleased with what I’ve done, but it’s even more exciting to think of what more could be done to get a fuller picture and a more complete answer to the question posed. So I’m glad that Dr. Nijhout will let me continue during the school year. I was planning to work on both Precis and Manduca, but I realized that I could only complete the project on Precis alone within the given time frame. Even so, I will need more data on Precis, since my wings only go to the 3rd and 4th days of development in the 5th instar, and it would be nice to get them up till the pupal stage.

Overall, HH has been amazing…not only did I get to work with an expert mentor, but I got a feel for what other labs, and other scientists, do through the weekly seminars. Starting off research this way couldn’t have been better.

If anything, scienctific discovery is a very slow process that requires years of dedicated commitment. The results, however, definitely make every effort worthwhile. What I can honestly say about researching this summer is that 8 weeks is nowhere near enough time to complete a worthy science project–I’ll be able to produce some results, but I won’t have the time to replicate them. I feel that if I could repeat my project again, everything will go much smoother because things had to be figured out as time progressed. The processes of retrieving data require massive amounts of time, and mistakes are inevitable, further delaying progress. In this sense, research truly tests one’s patience and I want to say that all the scientists who have actually produced admirable results were able to realize their goals by having tremendous patience over the course of the years. Thus, any misconceptions that I had had of science being a rather quick process (that experiments are fast and are quick to yield results) have all been dispelled. But this program has made me want to spend more time to conduct further research so that I may actually grasp more of the things in my discipline as well as familarize myself with other research techniques and ways of thinking. And I’m definitely excited that I have 3 more years at Duke to expand my knowledge of science, so that I’ll be able to better understand and apply my research.

 One thing, I think, that distinguishes research from other careers is the freedom that you get to pursue your questions. It’s a very self-driven career; there’s really no one else to tell you what to do because there are simply too many unanswered and unasked questions out there. This makes research both exciting and risky…you never know what you might end up discovering, or you might find that you really aren’t capable of answering your question at the moment.

Dr. Nijhout’s lab

Where I did my dissecting (the scope under the blue cover). The tank (on the left) is full of carbon dioxide for anaesthesizing the larvae before dissection.

Dr. Nijhout, Laura the lab tech (in green), and some of the grad students)

 Manduca larvae

 Precis larvae (much smaller than Manducas)

Manduca Wing Disk

Precis Wing Disk

I’m more or less done with dissecting and staining. It took a lot of care and patience to take out those tiny wings. There were moments of frustration: I would dissect the perfect wing and it would get ruined during the staining process, either because it got stuck to the insides of my pipette as I sucked it out of the well or I sucked it up to hard and damaged it. Blowing up the images took a long time too. It was like doing jigsaw puzzles, except I had to cut and tape the papers together. But now that I’m done with all of that, I can actually start analyzing my products. The hard part is creating landmarks on the wings. In the more developed wings, you can actually see the very distinct veination patterns, which makes it much easier to pinpoint growth. But in the earlier wings, it’s going to take some guesswork and luck because the veins haven’t really developed yet, or the trachea hasn’t yet branched off. So what I’m doing right now is trying to create regions on my wing pictures, which will faciliate the analysis of the mitotic divisions. I’m using various features of the microscope to produce images that will help me to better visualize the veins. After staring at these wings for these past few weeks, I’ve realized how awesome nature’s creations can be. A simple wing can change so much during the course of its development–I just think the precision and intricacy of the whole process is phenomenal. Butterfly wings are definitely one of the most fascinating and gorgeous elements found in nature. You really can’t get the full scope until you study them in detail.

After working in a lab these past few weeks, this unit on RCR has put some things in perspective. I realized that research is a long process that requires the collaboration of multiple partners. Any dishonesty or falsification in the network can disrupt the scientific process. To think that a PI could fabricate 10 years worth of data without being discovered is just devastating. But luckily, there are people within the lab who do have a strong sense of responsibility for the quality of the data and are willing to uncover the ills of an eminent scientist. This leads me to think that we each have the huge task of maintaining a high degree of ethical standards within the labs that we are a part of. We have the ability and responsibility to exchange our views concerning the research with our superiors.

This week, I had the opportunity to get to know my mentor, Dr. Nijhout, further. Through the seminar he gave on metabolic systems, I became more aware of the various other projects he’s been, and is currently involved with. Some pretty neat things I must say—the whole diagram of the folate cycle was very daunting. Now I really appreciate the cooperative aspect of scientific research and publication of results so that the community can piece together the bits of knowledge together to get a more encompassing picture.

What inspired me the most after my very informal interview with Dr. Nijhout was his fascination with his work. “I get paid to do my hobby,” he said. Why he does research? Because he enjoys solving “the puzzle.” I think we just have to be daring in our pursuits; ask the questions, but then try to solve the mystery behind it. Dr. Nijhout admitted that securing money to conduct the research is rather frustrating, especially considering the high risk nature of his interests. Half of the time, the projects that he start out with just don’t work or cannot be carried out during that specific time for whatever reason. But he typically juggles four or five projects simultaneously so there’s always something to work on.

Dr. Nijhout’s work mostly involves Lepidopterans, but he actually started off with marine invertebrates. He spent his high school years living on an island off the coast of Venezuela, where he scuba dived and such. He even had the thrill of discovering his own shrimp species (although he didn’t get to name). Dr. Nijhout didn’t like the idea of spending 90% of the time trying to keep marine invertebrates alive and having only 10% of the time to actually work with them. And besides, insects just seemed way cooler to him (after listening to a talk at Harvard on them) and are much easier to raise, so Dr, Nijhout switched organisms. He’s been working at Duke for his entire career, mentoring plenty of PhD students.

Besides being a scientist, Dr. Nijhout paints—some of his abstract pieces hang in his office. For about 15 years now, he’s been doing Raku-style pottery. He experiments with coloring the clay on the Bunsen burner at the lab. He showed me some brilliant colors—gold, purple, almost iridescent.

A busy first week, adjusting to Central Campus housing, familiarizing myself with the lab, and attending our first series of seminars. Kudos to Dr. Benfey’s talk on Systems Biology.

Alex Tobler, a grad student at Dr. Nijhout’s lab (she’s also involved with this program), showed me how to dissect the larvae and take out their imaginal wing disks on Monday. She made the task look quick and easy, but after a week of dissecting and preparing the slides, I feel like I’m just getting the gist of it. The wing disks are so delicate that immense care must be taken when handling them. Merely two layers of cells thick, it’s so easy to break them. A cool factoid: the blood/hemolymph of the Manduca larvae is green. Too bad that it turns black in saline solution. The bottom of the dissecting dish is black because of this. Laura, who’s been working with Dr. Nijhout for more than two decades, helps me out here and there. She taught me how to use the fluorescence microscope and I’ve been getting a feel for counting the mitotic divisions in the imaginal disks. Overall, it’s been very educational talking to Dr. Nijhout and the others in the lab and I’m very excited to learn more in the weeks to come.