Arman Grewal--WEEK 1, Dr. Shanks Lab, UPMC

My first week at Dr. Shanks lab has been amazing. Everybody in the lab is so nice and welcoming. I was so glad that the first day that I came to the lab that they put me to work. My PI is Dr. Shanks, but I am working with a super nice post doc, Dr. Brothers. She has showed me the tricks around the lab and taught me how to use an autoclave, pipettes, and how to grow cultures in an incubator. My PI taught me how to grow bacteria using a "stab" among many other things.

The first project that I was assigned involved testing the diffusion of a drug called Vigamox across contact lenses. This was a basic experiment designed to act as a supplement to a larger project that I will be working on later in my time here. The experiment involved a contact lens being placed on a filter and PBS be placed below the filter. I placed Vigamox in the lens and every ten minutes I would take a sample of the solution below the filter to test the amount of drug that had seeped through the contact lens and into the PBS. In my later experiment I will focus more on the diffusion of Vigamox across collagen corneal shields instead of contact lenses. One of the problems that I ran into while conducting the experiment was that the contact lens kept flipping inside out while the drug was sitting on top of the lens and if this happened the entire experiment would be ruined. A solution that we later came up with involves a ring that will hold the lenses while the experiment is being conducted.

The next experiment that my lab had me working on involved a 96 well plate. In order for the experiment to be conducted correctly, Dr. Brothers and Dr. Shanks had to teach me how to use a spectrometer which would be used to test the strength of a culture and a reading machine which I would use to read the well plate at OD 600 and A590 to compare the growth of biofilm. The bacteria that I will be working with the begin with is Staph Epi. The bacteria is a pale color and has quite an odor! After a couple of days, I got used to the odor however. The idea of the experiment is to test how the amount of Dexamethasome in DMSO affected biofilm formation in bacteria, specifically ones that affect the eye. The steps of the experiment were complicated the first time I conducted the experiment, because it involved a 2 fold dilution across every row as well as a dilution of the solution into the wells that had the bacteria.

My PI has instructed me to keep a excel document that has everything that I have worked on so far. After my first week I have already conducted 5 trials of the experiment, however for each trial I have two tabs of data, involving three graphs and a basic protocol of the experiment that differs each time. In addition to the excel document I also have a lab binder and my own bench! In my binder I have a drawing of a well plate that details exactly what is in each well and a notebook paper which has the exact steps I took.

This first week was also my first experience with a lab meeting. This involves the three members of the lab telling each others and the lab head, Dr. Shanks, how their experiment is doing. Everyone was kind enough to take the time and explain in much detail what exactly they were doing. The lab meeting ended up taking around 4 hours! It usually takes 30 minutes. I feel like I have a connection with everyone in the lab and I am very happy here!

The commute to my lab is kind of hard. I am staying with my aunt and uncle, whose house is around a 30 minute walk and a 5 minute drive. However, neither of them work at UPMC everyday and when they do they leave the house very early. So, I am stuck taking the bus. This would not be a problem except it costs $2.50 one way. This would mean I would be spending $5 everyday. What I have decided to do is take the bus in the morning and walk back at night. The terrain is very hilly and hard to do when I am tired. This is not a big issue however.

Overall I am so happy and excited to be here! This is going to be a great summer!