Tanvi Dange, Entry #1, The Beginning

As many people end their EXP experience this week, I begin mine! The week of July 11- July 15, 2016 was my first week at the Franz Lab at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Specifically, the lab is located in the French Family Science Center on West Campus. Not everyone in the lab was in the lab this week, but I believe the lab has around 12 members, including the PI, all the graduate students, and all the undergraduates. 

View from the lab: The Duke Greenhouse

 I honestly could not have had a better first week. On my first day, I met Lizzie White, the graduate student I'll be working with, at her house near Duke, and we drove to the lab together. The reason we carpooled was because I hadn't bought a parking pass yet because I needed my Duke Card first. So in the morning on that first day, Lizzie and I drove all over campus to get my Duke Card and Parking Pass. In the time between getting the Duke Card and getting the Parking Pass I had a chance to finally meet my PI, Dr. Katherine Franz, who welcomed me to the lab with open arms. By the time we finished running these errands, it was already lunch time, so some of the undergraduate students in my lab, Emma and Mike, invited me to eat lunch with them and a couple other undergraduate students also working at Duke labs for the summer.

After lunch, Lizzie and I sat down, and she talked me through her work in the lab, and she talked to me about my project specifically, which I ended up starting that same week! Lizzie's work mostly involves Anti-Fungal Susceptibility Testing (AFST) for Fungal Cells, especially the fungus Candida albicans. Since I'm a minor, I am not allowed to work with Candida, so instead she said I would be doing AFST for Saccharomyces cerevisiae (also more commonly known as baker's yeast). 

So for some of Monday and Tuesday I mostly helped Lizzie with her projects by testing the absorbance of her compounds with copper on the UV-vis instrument and helped her make an overnight culture (ON culture) and assays for her Candida (with the assays, I just did the setup of the plates because again I'm not allowed to touch Candida). 

Lizzie taking C. albicans cells from her agar plates for her ON culture

Finally on Wednesday, it was my turn for AFST. First I made my ON culture by preparing a 1:1000 dilution of S. cerevisiae in yeast extract peptone dextrose (YPD) media. Then I incubated the ON culture for 21 hours at 30 degrees Celsius and shaking at 200 revolutions per minute. 

my ON culture in the orange falcon tube holder

Then on Thursday it was time for me to create my assays. I made three plates: one with Saccharomyces, Fluconazole in DMSO, and Copper, one with Saccharomyces, Fluconazole in DMSO and BCS; and one with Saccharomyces, Copper, BCS, and DMSO. For the first two plates, I divided the wells in half and only added the supplement of each respective plate in half of the wells. And for the last plate, the control plate, the first three wells had copper, the next three had BCS and the last row had DMSO in YPD media.

my three plates 

Once I finished the plates, I had to put them in the incubator for 48 hours. On Friday, I took a couple time points for the plates by placing them in the plate reader so that I could see how effective my concentrations of Fluconazole +/- supplement were on the strains of Saccharomyces. Since the 48 hours will be up on Saturday, Lizzie agreed to take that time point for me, so I should know the final results of the trays when I come back to the lab Monday morning for another exciting week. :)

placing my plates in the plate reading (and yes, I'm aware of how great I look in this lab coat ;)  )