I could not have asked for a better
first week at Dr. Reddy’s lab at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. I moved into my
apartment on Sunday, and found out that there is a shuttle that goes from my
apartment directly to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, which is really convenient,
especially during rush-hour in the mornings. On my first day, I met everyone in
the lab including my PI, Dr. Reddy, who was so nice and welcoming and further
explained to me the goals of her research. I learned that I would be working
directly with Jennifer, a Phd student at Hopkins, who was equally as welcoming
and encouraging as Dr. Reddy. In Dr. Reddy’s lab, there are four other Phd
students and a junior in college at UNC who is also interning for the summer. Jennifer
said we are getting two more graduate students Monday, so I am really excited
to meet them. On my first day, my mentor in the lab, Jennifer, had a lab
meeting with Dr. Reddy. During the lab meeting, both Jennifer and Dr. Reddy
explained to me more about their research and told me about the project that I
will be starting next week. While I was so nervous walking into the lab on the
first day, I felt instantly welcomed and learned so much by the end of the day.
During
my first week, I shadowed Jennifer around the lab as she explained all the
techniques and lab equipment used in the Reddy Lab. On my second day, I did tissue culturing on
mammalian cells. While it seemed simple, it ended up taking me five minutes
longer than when Jennifer did the tissue culturing. Because tissue culturing has
to be done in a sterile environment, we had to work in a hood that is only
slightly open, so only our hands can reach inside the hood. When using the pipettes,
you had to be absolutely certain the pipette does not touch anything else. I
ended up going through four pipettes because I ended up touching the table with
my pipette! To begin the tissue culture, I first had to make the medium for the
cells. Each day, I also had to look at the cells under the microscope to check that
the cells were confluent enough. When the cells were around 70-80% confluent,
we had to split the cells. On my third day in the lab, we started BioID which
screens for protein interactions in a living cell. On Thursday, we did gel electrophoreses
which uses electricity to separate DNA fragments and on Friday we started a
Western blot. A western blot identifies the antibodies which proteins have been
separated from by their size from the gel electrophoresis. On Friday, I also
learned how to count cells and we did a Chromatin IP which determines whether a
protein and DNA interaction is present at a given location. Jennifer told me
that on Monday, we will start cloning protein coding genes such as YY1, so I am
really excited to learn that!
One of
my favorite experiences so far working in the Reddy lab are the seminars.
Almost every other day, we go to a seminar that is hosted by visiting PI’s from
around the country. This week, a PI at the St. Jude’s hospital talked about her
research with metabolism and another professor gave a talk about neuroscience. On
Friday, a senior editor at Nature (one of the top three science journals) gave
a talk about how to get your research published at Nature magazine and the
application process and what to do if your proposal is rejected. I was
surprised and shocked when she said that they get more than 200 research papers
every month, and they only accept 5% to be published in their magazine!
I am so
glad that I chose to do my research at the Reddy lab, and I am looking forward
for the weeks ahead!
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