I hate my bed.
The past week and a half have been extremely hectic for me, both in and out of the lab. I got moved in to my apartment at Hamilton Court (which is about three blocks away from my lab, thank the Lawd) on Saturday, June 11. When I walked into my room, there was no bed or any trace of one. After some rummaging around, my mother and I managed to find an Ikea box filled with bed parts (a bed frame, a backboard, nails, etc.) Naturally, as is characteristic of us Massenburgs, my mother left me to assemble the bed on my own :-/. I ran up and down the stairs of my new building, desperately looking for someone to help me hastily put together something for me to sleep on for the night (or right then and there, I was pretty tired). A wonderful grad student in her mid twenties kindly obliged and followed me back to the top floor of the building where my apartment sits. With only the head of a screw driver, we sweated away five hours of our lives trying to put the bed together, when we finally finished around 5 pm. At the end of all that, we finished only to realize one of my roommates had been sitting in her bedroom the whole time (luckily, she's moving out soon, because she's not the nicest person).
The running back and forth and self-help that it took to put my bed together are characteristic of my lab experience over the past week and a half. The Monday that I started, I found out that the Post-Doc who would be supervising my work was out the whole week at a conference in Colorado, with the lab PI Dr. Kelly Jordan-Sciutto. That first day was filled with me reading articles about the AhR receptor inducing the upregulation of STC-2 protein during the unfolded protein response characterized by (blah blah blah). Cagla, a Turkish Doctor who switched to Medical Research from private practice, realized how bored I was and took me under her wing. I found out she would be working with myself and the absent Post Doc, Dan, on establishing Cinnabarinic Acid as a potential medical alternative to regular antiretroviral medications in HIV patients. I further learned that the project is actually a secret; until I am able to quantify the results obtained from exposed cortical mouse cells, Cagla and Dan fear reporting the project to our PI Kelly on the grounds that it might fail miserably. From what we have seen so far through neuro imaging technology, results are very promising.
Post-Doc Dan has been out again, but this time he is sick from a tick bite he received during the Colorado trip. Because of his high rank in the lab, he is overseeing several projects at once, and I have been partnered up temporarily with a grad student named Claire on a new project on the E2F1 protein that he is working on. E2F1 may be implicated in some of the neuronal damage and cell death exhibited in HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder victims. The mechanism behind this, however, is unknown, and the project may be on the brink of uncovering that mystery. Currently, we are using gel electrophoresis (Thanks @Sham) to determine whether or not insertion of E2F1 into a plasmid for replication has been successful. Each well uses different restriction enzyme settings to allow for various sizes of DNA strands to pass through the gel. To my surprise, many of the people in the lab have been extremely impressed with a lot of the lab skills I have inherited from EXP and Biotechnology courses. I did not really know that these were skills many high school students do not have, and it has put into perspective for me what skills Peddie has endowed us with over the past three years. Claire was especially appreciative of that, especially because it has made the work less labor intensive for her.
Most of my days may be spent quantifying computer data of fluorescent images of mouse neurons after exposure to toxic chemicals and protective agents. This, I have been told, might involve some implementation of simple derivative calculus to flesh out any exhibited trends from the data. Ultimately, this will help with the results section of the proposal they will soon submit to NIH and NCBI for more funding to continue the project to fruition. I don't really want to sit at a computer all day, so I will most likely continue to help Claire with the E2F1 project and continue to shadow others in their own projects. I am having a pretty good time here, I like the people in my lab, and love the Center City area a lot.
The Levy Building, Where I work.
Hamilton Court, Where I live.
I hope to fill my weekends by visiting friends and family in the tri-state area (this past weekend, I met up with Masa, Alex Larson, and Zach for a Mets Game in Queens. I don't like baseball, but I had fun seeing some of my best friends). I will update on my many experiences, and will hopefully have a lot of fun things to report on. Hopefully my bed doesn't fall apart in the next few weeks (it is, after all, from Ikea). Likewise, hopefully I don't end up losing any of the data I will be collecting (@Jenny). That would be a nightmare.
I will definitely be very busy when Dan comes back in, as he has already sent me two separate protocols for RNA isolation and a viewing of results we will be doing tomorrow. I have been sorted into two separate projects, but I am looking forward to the excitement that my work may bring!
(Sorry for any spelling mistakes!)
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