NEW SCIENTIFIC ENDEAVORS

So, College...

It’s all so new, interesting, hard and busy. Classes aren't as bad as I thought they'd be, but I wouldn't say they're easy either. Amongst all my classes, there is this one course that just blows me away. It is a first year studies course (FIYS) called "Making sense of Aging". 

This course, like any other first year studies course; is created to introduce students into the college way of studying and writing. We get a lot of reading assignments every other day, and a writing component. Like the title of the course suggests, we try to make sense of the process of aging in different organisms including human beings.

So far we have read a lot of peer reviewed articles about researches conducted about the topic. We have read books by Mark Benecke- a German Forensic Biologist, and a lot of other scientist exploring ways in which some organisms have managed to keep from showing signs of Senescence while other keep aging and dying.

Recently we read an article about the research on aging done on Caenorhabditis elegans or C-elegans. Basically these worms have developed a strong stress resistance system that allows them to live longer by skipping a stage in their life cycle. In stage L1, the C-elegans larvae, provided extreme situations such as overcrowding or food scarcity; go through a Dauer stage of growth instead of L2 till adult worm.

This stage allows C-elegans larvae (now called Deuer) to save a lot of energy and storing fat by not eating and not moving as much as they would in L2 stage. It is at this stage that the larva resists factors that would be detrimental to normal growing larvae, such as food scarcity, high temperatures, overcrowding etc.

It has been found that C-elegans that go through the Dauer stage live longer than those who don’t. This is through other more complex genomic activities that accompany the Dauer stage. Genomic information that is stopped or initiated to make little changes in cell activities that enable these worms to live much longer than their "wild type" partners. These genomic materials have an equivalent in human beings....Which I will address in my next post.

Thanks ya’ll…

FINAL BLOG

May 18^th 2010

This internship was my first hand on lab experience. I had the chance to design experiments and make PCR reactions. The first few days at the internship at The New York State Museum in Albany were a bit hard and confusing; I didn’t know a lot about the topic my mentor was researching very well. I asked a lot of questions about the relationship between the topics I already knew and how they were related to Lepidoptera Mitochondrial DNA sequencing.

In the beginning I had two mentors, Mr. Adams and Ms. Urban; they both had other on going researching aside from the one they worked with me, but they devoted a lot of time teaching me about how to use materials in the lab and guiding me as I made mistakes in the process of learning. Unfortunately, in the middle of my internship, Ms. Urban had to transfer to another state; leaving me with one mentor Mr. Adams. Both Mr. Adams and I worked hard continued to make experiments as Julie instructed me to. And occasionally, we would email her for help with things we otherwise couldn’t figure out.

This experience has not only given me a chance to work in the lab, something I had never done before coming to Emma; it also taught me how to interact with other people towards a goal. I learned how to be independent, trust my decisions in the lab and out, make connections based on data, learn from mistakes and above all made me realize just how much science is a part of me. Because of this internship, I have talked to my soon to be college professor about an internship on a similar research this fall.

For anyone interested in Interning: take a chance and try it, it will soon prove to be the best decision you have ever made. The experience is edifying in both an academic sense and life as a whole.

FINALIZING INTERNSHIP

May 03^rd 2012,

Mr. Adams wanted me to see and comment on the recommendation letter he wants to write for me. He then reviewed my poster, made some clarification about the results and hypothesis of the research. From the genera that we didn’t work with “Euparthenos” to the Sequencing results we are expecting from North Carolina.

Here are some bullet points for clarification on the poster presentation of “Moth Mitochondrial DNA sequencing”:

• -       We had three groups of species. These represented 3 genera. The species within each genus, were closely related with the species in the same genus, but further related to those of another genus.
• -       The species that shared more, morphological properties and molecular sequences were most closely related; thus placed in the same genus. We group them based on their similarities.
• -       Euparthenos was used as an out-group, to compare between it a
• -       There are 15 mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes), in this research we have used NAD6. We are worked with COX1 and NAD 1.

With the time that I have spent in and out of the laboratory with the help and patient guidance of Mr. Sam Adams and Ms. Julie Urban, I can now understand the chemical and biological structure, functions and techniques to manipulate DNA. I am planning to continue working in the field of DNA sequencing in college with different algae’s, bacteria’s and cells. This experience has been enriching with endless opportunities for success and learning.