SUMMER RESEARCH

Hello everybody! I just thought I’d tell you all about the Summer research experience and a little of what I do.

(there is a quick version of this at the bottom; skip this if you want) I’m going to try to give a quick summary without too much science talk, but currently I’m working with Drosophila melanogaster also known as the fruit fly. I’m working in a lab with my professor and one other student. What the lab is doing, is genetically modifying the flies so they express certain mutations. Then we are going to test their behavior by touching their bristles and observing whether they lift their legs in response.  We want these flies to first behave in a manner which they respond to our touches as a reflex. Then, once we have mutant flies, we want them not to respond. If the flies do not respond to our touch, then something is wrong with their neurological circuitry/pathway which we will then examine more closely. We hope to find out where in the pathway that the touch response went wrong. If we find out what is wrong with the pathway then we can look at the genes to see if there is any relation in human hearing loss problems. We are far from looking at pathways. What I am currently doing is setting up control flies to compare to the mutant flies we are going to be making and testing their behavior in our assay. Hopefully you can get an idea what I’m doing there now…

TL;DR (too long; didn’t read)/ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5): We want to make flies glow (using genetics) in a certain way so we can test them and observe how they will behave and hopefully find a relation to hearing and sensation.

Things that I’ve done directly and accomplishments in the lab is we just got our first MARCM fly (Mosaic Analysis with a Repressible Cell Marker – basically means we get glowing dots in specific areas of the fly), and we named her Wendy, she’s the first of many flies that the lab has been building up for 3 years so it is really exciting to see the results we have. What we wanted was flies that showed this green on certain sections of the flies that we would use to test. What I’m doing is developing the best way get the expression of these green spots on certain areas of the flies that we want, so we can test them.

The green glow is known as GFP (Green Florescent protein) and flies will express this because they have the gene to do so. Wendy is different from the the other fly because she can only glow in certain areas because she has different genes that are expressed differently.

Completely Glowing Fly (photo taken from my phone)

Wendy The Fly, Glows in specific areas

Completely Glowing Fly (taken from same camera as Wendy)

Now that all that research stuff is out of the way, let me talk to you more about my experiences. Overall, I’d rate it pretty great with a few minor exceptions. I’ll weigh it out with pros/cons. I’ll do cons first to get them out of the way.
Cons

Housing: The room I got is really big and nice, but No AC. Also the communal bathroom on the hall I’m in is really dirty and there are no urinals, suggesting I’ve been placed into a female floor with males for room fitting issues. The housing I’ve been placed in could be better, especially if we could have got in the senior apartments. There is a communal fridge downstairs in the basement where everyone’s stuff is packed, and there are two stoves which was placed to allow us to cook for ourselves. The only problem is that again, stoves are dirty. Perhaps this more reflective of how the Holy Cross community and students treat their dorms/shared possessions. Although to be fair, we are paying 50$ a week for rent, which is really cheap, so you can’t complain.

Food availability is also somewhat related to the housing issue as the dinning options and hours (if you want to pay for really overpriced food –the same price during regular school session–) are not that great.

Athletic center isn’t open as much and I’d have to workout right after I get out from lab and by then I’m usually tired to go right away and I like to rest a bit before the workout. The pool (my forte is swimming) is closed for the summer for maintenance although hopefully that won’t be the case next summer. So not being able to use the machines and resources of the Hart Center during a wider range of hours is kind of a bummer.

Lastly, being a freshman going into summer research, you could possibly be presented with not many people to interact with and without a car going around places is hard, so I recommend getting a zipcar or bringing a car along. On the weekends most people go home since most people here are from MA otherwise sometimes roommates might be able to go home with their other roommate who lives in MA to not die of boredom.

Also to note, the pay you get may or may not be more than what you would get if you got a nice internship or had a job that pays better. You get paid 420$ a week BEFORE taxes during the whole session (470 if you’re not living on campus).

Okay, now the PROS

Depending on your year, the room you get depending on your choice, is a significant improvement from the sophomore and freshman dorms. I have a suite with 3 other roommates and the room is big relative to the double I had.

The experience so far for me, in the lab has been excellent. Just being on campus for the summer is a lot more relaxing than in the school year, because basically I just do my work and not have to worry about tests or lectures and that competitive feel.

You learn how to use a lot of instruments and the experience is wonderful. I’ve learned how to autoclave things, lab techniques such as PCR (polymerase chain reaction), microscopes, identifying virgin flies, and having the independence to do my own things. You also get to go to seminars that the science research department holds every week with a free lunch and learn what other people around the campus are doing. I also got to go a seminar/talk relating to what my lab does at the UMass in Worcester where there was a talk about flies and other related topics of neuroscience. You also get into practicing and reading published papers, which maybe hard at first but it’s a great skill to develop.

There is also a lot of talk and discussion of Graduate school and studies and I had a lot of experiences learning about the different types of programs and situations people can get into. There were talks and discussions of ethics trainings in science, and I got to experience lab meetings which are really cool and my professor, lab partner and I come together to discuss our work and read over a published paper.

These are only just a few of the many things that I’m doing and learning while researching here, tip of the iceberg sort of speak. I’ll hopefully make another post about the summer research soon since it’s ending in two weeks and add anything I’m missing. Sorry for the long post but hopefully it was informational.

You can find out more about the summer research here: http://academics.holycross.edu/sciencecoordinator/research

Best,

Dan

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2012 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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