Hi this is Evan Strand and I just finished the last week of my internship working at the Scripps Research Institute with the Dorris Neuroscience Center in the the Ye Lab. It’s been a great experience having the opportunity as a high school student to do research with undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers with their PhDs. Even though Dr. Ye was in charge of the lab, I mostly worked with my mentor, Neeraj, who gave me a lot of guidance, but then trusted me to work independently. I’m thankful for all of his support and grateful to Pinhead for arranging this internship.
What I found out about research is that it involves a variety of experiments that we work on in different intervals. The research at the Ye Lab focuses on studying metabolism with a variety of experiments on mice. During my 6-week internship, I was involved with 3 different experiments in various stages, working on monitoring data with the mice, compiling data, and even preparing new mice for another experiment. This past week I observed one of the graduate students doing “surgery” on a mouse. They first inject a light-sensitive protein into a specific part of the brain, then attach a fiber optic cable. With this cable attached, the lab now gives these mice the nickname “unicorn.” Then when it comes time for the experiment, a tube is attached to the fiber optic cable to send light into the mouse’s brain to activate the protein.
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