A blog for sharing of intern experiences on internships made possible with the collaborations of CSU Fresno, Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute (La Jolla, CA) and Central Valley Health Policy Institute.
Hi Dr. Bush, everything went very well this week Judith my Post-Doc mentor in Dr. Wolf's lab is great! She is very helpful, patient and very friendly. Dr. Wolf is abroad right now so Philip and I have not gotten the chance to meet him, but I am very excited to be working under his lab. Right now we were able to see and become involved in running a Western Blot along with running some PCR. Oh! and of course the weather is great not compared to that of Fresno's.
This has been a fun and eventful week. On Monday, we all headed over to the Sanford-Burnham campus, and it was a quick and pleasant walk. We mainly filled out paperwork and became oriented with the campus. On Monday in the Wolf lab, Karina and I met Judith Schelinga. We are working on her project where we analyze polysomes and the role of eIF3 (also called int6). We got a couple papers to read to learn background on the experiment. On Tuesday, we traversed the UCSD campus to participate in the Bridges program. There was a campus tour and lectures on group studying, time management, and goal setting. On Wednesday, we met with Dr. Salveson and discussed various meetings (presentations and journal clubs). In lab, I learned how to use a pipette of various sizes and how to run a PCR. We let the samples run overnight. On Thursday we started an SDS-PAGE and a western blot. We used samples from a polysome profile that Judith had run earlier. Since we had safety training, Judith did the transfer from membrane to gel. We helped her block the samples and add the primary antibody. To get the best results, we left the membranes in a cold room and on a rocker overnight. Today, we did the washes and added the secondary antibody. Judith showed us how to use the membranes to expose film then develop the film. Afterward, I learned how to make agarose gel and run a DNA gel electrophoresis. When the gel finished running, we imaged it using uv light. Judith and Karina both know quite a lot! It has been a great experience learning and receiving formal lab training. I look forward for the weeks to come.
This first week has definitely passed us by with a blink of an eye and thus far the Sanford Burnham Internship has been a great learning, positive, and interesting experience.I have been placed in Dr.Pellecchia's lab and our project deals with protein expression and purification. My post-doc mentor is Elisa Barile, who is a very caring and bright individual. We have not started any protein expression's thus far because it is important for us to get a better understanding of what actually occurs during these purification's and why. Our days have been spent researching and better understanding elements such as BH3 or BID, analyzing our specific protein BID sequence, Histidine tags, a detailed lab protocol, recombinant proteins, and presented a powerpoint about Protein Expression to Elisa to show our understanding of the concept. A final side comment: I can definitely smell the money here.
This week Griselda and I began our literature research. We have been looking for articles primarily related to pesticides and their effect on cancer, specifically prostate and breast cancer. We have been in contact with Dr. Kwon who has set up a drop box folder that has allowed us to share and view our articles of interest. The main focus of our project is still in process and we have contacted Dr.Kwon in order to set up a meeting with him next week so that we can brainstorm and narrow down our ideas. Currently I have been researching the effect of obesity and lifestyle choices as well as the effect of pesticide exposure on prostate cancer.I contacted Chuck who recommended the use of the CHIS database, and I am working on setting up a meeting with him next week in order to learn how to use and navigate the database.
Early in the week Dr. Kwon invited Jose and I to join a document sharing site called Dropbox, through which we will be sharing our research updates. He created a communication log which will be very helpful and keep our thoughts and literature search organized.This week was all about brainstorming and gathering good articles of our interest which we will furthermore discuss about with Dr. Kwon.We are hoping to meet early next week and begin laying out our thoughts and shaping the focus of our project. Jose and I would like to direct this research towards the effect the exposure to pesticides may have in the development of cancer. I have been reading some interesting articles about various cancer diseases and statistical work demonstrating cancer mortality rates throughout the years. In the mean time we will continue to read and analyze the readings until further direction from Dr. Kwon.
This week was mostly an introduction to the work that goes on in Salvesen's lab and safety training. One of the things that I learned about was Neutrophils and their role in cancer. I also discovered that I need to review some of the techniques that I learned in microbiology because they are used in biomedical research. Overall its a been a great experience and I am learning a lot about the things that I need to improve upon and the skills that I need to develop to be successful in biomedical research.
This second week was a short week due to the 4th of July, but it was also a very busy week. This was also the week that Claudia and I got to work on our own, I was both exited and nervous. The main focus of this week was enzyme kinetics in which we measured the rate of product formation using different enzyme and substrate combinations. Although I am not an expert on Enzyme kinetics it feels good to get the expected reaction rates. My next goal is to learn to interpret the information that we acquired and apply to the next step in our lab assignment.
This 3rd week Griselda and I focused on putting our power point together. We wanted to be able to provide a sort of road map for everyone else in the program to see the direction we were heading in. We met with Dr. Kwon who gave us suggestions on how to organize and present our presentation. We also met with Chuck and discussed what type of approach we could take concerning the data. After talking with Chuck we decided we would do a correlation study: That is trying to determine (in my case) if there is a correlation between obesity and prostate/breast cancer here in the San Joaquin Valley.
This week we also had our first conference. It was really interesting to see what everyone has been working on for the past few weeks. The lab students had very interesting presentations and I will be trying to look up some of the information they talked about so that I will hopefully have a better understanding of their experiments. I feel everyone gave good presentations and I look forward to seeing what else is to come in future conferences. I also felt that the questions that were asked were quite helpful and they allowed me to look at my project from different perspectives. The questions provided new ideas and gave me further suggestions for what direction to take.
For the 4th week I will be focusing on data and data analysis. I will be attempting to refine my project and address the different questions that were asked. (Age, Location, Control group, Nurses data base)
Hi Dr. Bush, everything went very well this week Judith my Post-Doc mentor in Dr. Wolf's lab is great! She is very helpful, patient and very friendly. Dr. Wolf is abroad right now so Philip and I have not gotten the chance to meet him, but I am very excited to be working under his lab. Right now we were able to see and become involved in running a Western Blot along with running some PCR. Oh! and of course the weather is great not compared to that of Fresno's.
ReplyDeleteThis has been a fun and eventful week. On Monday, we all headed over to the Sanford-Burnham campus, and it was a quick and pleasant walk. We mainly filled out paperwork and became oriented with the campus. On Monday in the Wolf lab, Karina and I met Judith Schelinga. We are working on her project where we analyze polysomes and the role of eIF3 (also called int6). We got a couple papers to read to learn background on the experiment. On Tuesday, we traversed the UCSD campus to participate in the Bridges program. There was a campus tour and lectures on group studying, time management, and goal setting. On Wednesday, we met with Dr. Salveson and discussed various meetings (presentations and journal clubs). In lab, I learned how to use a pipette of various sizes and how to run a PCR. We let the samples run overnight. On Thursday we started an SDS-PAGE and a western blot. We used samples from a polysome profile that Judith had run earlier. Since we had safety training, Judith did the transfer from membrane to gel. We helped her block the samples and add the primary antibody. To get the best results, we left the membranes in a cold room and on a rocker overnight. Today, we did the washes and added the secondary antibody. Judith showed us how to use the membranes to expose film then develop the film. Afterward, I learned how to make agarose gel and run a DNA gel electrophoresis. When the gel finished running, we imaged it using uv light. Judith and Karina both know quite a lot! It has been a great experience learning and receiving formal lab training. I look forward for the weeks to come.
ReplyDeleteThis first week has definitely passed us by with a blink of an eye and thus far the Sanford Burnham Internship has been a great learning, positive, and interesting experience.I have been placed in Dr.Pellecchia's lab and our project deals with protein expression and purification. My post-doc mentor is Elisa Barile, who is a very caring and bright individual. We have not started any protein expression's thus far because it is important for us to get a better understanding of what actually occurs during these purification's and why. Our days have been spent researching and better understanding elements such as BH3 or BID, analyzing our specific protein BID sequence, Histidine tags, a detailed lab protocol, recombinant proteins, and presented a powerpoint about Protein Expression to Elisa to show our understanding of the concept. A final side comment: I can definitely smell the money here.
ReplyDeleteThis week Griselda and I began our literature research. We have been looking for articles primarily related to pesticides and their effect on cancer, specifically prostate and breast cancer. We have been in contact with Dr. Kwon who has set up a drop box folder that has allowed us to share and view our articles of interest. The main focus of our project is still in process and we have contacted Dr.Kwon in order to set up a meeting with him next week so that we can brainstorm and narrow down our ideas. Currently I have been researching the effect of obesity and lifestyle choices as well as the effect of pesticide exposure on prostate cancer.I contacted Chuck who recommended the use of the CHIS database, and I am working on setting up a meeting with him next week in order to learn how to use and navigate the database.
ReplyDeleteEarly in the week Dr. Kwon invited Jose and I to join a document sharing site called Dropbox, through which we will be sharing our research updates. He created a communication log which will be very helpful and keep our thoughts and literature search organized.This week was all about brainstorming and gathering good articles of our interest which we will furthermore discuss about with Dr. Kwon.We are hoping to meet early next week and begin laying out our thoughts and shaping the focus of our project. Jose and I would like to direct this research towards the effect the exposure to pesticides may have in the development of cancer. I have been reading some interesting articles about various cancer diseases and statistical work demonstrating cancer mortality rates throughout the years. In the mean time we will continue to read and analyze the readings until further direction from Dr. Kwon.
ReplyDeleteThis week was mostly an introduction to the work that goes on in Salvesen's lab and safety training. One of the things that I learned about was Neutrophils and their role in cancer. I also discovered that I need to review some of the techniques that I learned in microbiology because they are used in biomedical research. Overall its a been a great experience and I am learning a lot about the things that I need to improve upon and the skills that I need to develop to be successful in biomedical research.
ReplyDeleteThis second week was a short week due to the 4th of July, but it was also a very busy week. This was also the week that Claudia and I got to work on our own, I was both exited and nervous. The main focus of this week was enzyme kinetics in which we measured the rate of product formation using different enzyme and substrate combinations. Although I am not an expert on Enzyme kinetics it feels good to get the expected reaction rates. My next goal is to learn to interpret the information that we acquired and apply to the next step in our lab assignment.
ReplyDeleteThis 3rd week Griselda and I focused on putting our power point together. We wanted to be able to provide a sort of road map for everyone else in the program to see the direction we were heading in. We met with Dr. Kwon who gave us suggestions on how to organize and present our presentation. We also met with Chuck and discussed what type of approach we could take concerning the data. After talking with Chuck we decided we would do a correlation study: That is trying to determine (in my case) if there is a correlation between obesity and prostate/breast cancer here in the San Joaquin Valley.
ReplyDeleteThis week we also had our first conference. It was really interesting to see what everyone has been working on for the past few weeks. The lab students had very interesting presentations and I will be trying to look up some of the information they talked about so that I will hopefully have a better understanding of their experiments. I feel everyone gave good presentations and I look forward to seeing what else is to come in future conferences. I also felt that the questions that were asked were quite helpful and they allowed me to look at my project from different perspectives. The questions provided new ideas and gave me further suggestions for what direction to take.
For the 4th week I will be focusing on data and data analysis. I will be attempting to refine my project and address the different questions that were asked. (Age, Location, Control group, Nurses data base)