Hello, my name is Jadin Scott and I am a 2021 Pintern from Telluride, Colorado. This past weekend I made the trek from my little mountain town across the desert and arrived in San Diego, California. During my time here, I will be working at San Diego State University on the Rohwer Lab, studying the interactions of viruses and microbes on coral reefs.
On my first day, I was immediately put into gloves and thrown right into doing lab work, as it was the starting date (day -8) of the current experiment, and baseline samples needed to be taken. I began by learning to take VMR samples and make an anodisk slide that can be viewed and photographed under a microscope with a grad student named Rachel. On my second day in the lab, I assisted the post-doc I am working under, Andrés, with DNA extraction. This was especially cool because the protocol we were using for the extraction is being developed by our lab — so I got to be a part of the creation of a new method for extracting DNA!
The little blue dots are the DNA!
This is a very long process, with lots of waiting involved, so during my downtime, I read several scientific papers recommended to me by my new coworkers, as well as a book written by our head professor, Dr. Forest Rohwer. This work was continued on Wednesday (as I said, it’s a very long process). On Thursday morning, I worked with another grad student, Jenna, and learned how to use the water testing kits that help us determine the levels of Nitrate, Calcium, Alkalinity, Ammonia, etc. in the lab’s aquariums. I will be using these kits to collect this data throughout the duration of the experiment. After my lab work for the day was finished, I received an introduction to coding in the digital program R, which is used across all fields of science for the organization of data, creation of graphs, complicated calculations, and more. As I have never before taken a coding class, this was all very new to me, but I will definently gain more experience with it throughout the internship. On Thursday afternoon, I also helped with some chemistry calculations to determine the amount and concentration of stock solutions that need to be made for the current experiment.
Calculations for the DOC experiment stalk solutions
These solutions will essentially be sugar water, made from glucose, galactose, xylose, and mannose, which will be added to the aquarium over the course of 5 days for a DOC (dissolved organic carbon) experiment. The goal of this particular experiment is to figure out how much the microbes are eating and use that information to learn about the tank’s carbon. All of this was reviewed during the team meeting for the experiment on Friday, during which I was also debriefed on the larger goal of the lab and other projects they’ve been working on. (The ultimate goal of the lab and all of its experiments is to save the world’s reefs, which are in rapid decline). After Friday’s meeting, I worked with grad student Anneke and learned how to make and stain anodisk slides for protists in the aquarium water (similar to the work I did with the VRM samples with Rachel).
As for my personal life, the transition from Telluride to the city was a little rough. Learning to drive on freeways gave me anxiety and the culture shock was worse than expected. However, after my first week here I am already starting to adjust and fall in love with the city, and I am grateful to have an experience like this before going off to college. Early in the week, I drove up to Encinitas to have dinner and ice cream on the beach with my younger sister and took a walk along the coast one evening after work.
Steamed buns from Encinitas!
On Thursday night, I met up with fellow Pinterns Didi and Lulu for dinner, and we explored a two-floor Walmart–a mind-blowing concept for three small-town girls. We connected again on Saturday to adventure around the La Jolla coves, go to the county fair, and play in the waves at Windansea beach.
Rides at the fair with Lulu and Didi
I love being so close to the ocean!!! On Sunday, I was able to meet up with my good friend Tatiana who is visiting the area with her family. I have also spent a significant amount of time in Trader Joes already! My addiction to their coconut-based cold brew ice cream with tapioca pearls has been sparked, and I can already tell I am going to miss it dearly when I have to return home.
Overall, I had an amazing first week at my internship, and cannot wait to see what the following weeks at SDSU have to bring!
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