Welcome back for the second week of my internship at the Dorris Neuroscience Center! I got all of my safety protocols and training over on Friday last week so I was able to do some hands-on work this week! I started on Monday by helping with a midiprep. The midiprep is a helpful procedure that is usually done to isolate high-purity plasmid DNA from bacteria cultures (in this case E-coli). The DNA from midiprep can be used for various sequencing or PCR (which I got to do later in the week). Midiprep is able to take small amounts of DNA and amplify it into usable amounts. In addition to midiprep, I also got to run the NanoDrop machine which will tell you the concentration and quality of a DNA sample. Lastly, on Monday I was able to get in some pipetting practice using my mentor’s pipettes.
On Tuesday I got to help with another midiprep and run the NanoDrop machine a few more times. I also was able to run my first electrophoresis gel. When the gel runs, DNA is concentrated in wells at one edge. An electric current is passed through the gel and the DNA will travel with the current and become concentrated in bands depending on the size of the fragments. The different concentrations form a ladder of DNA that can be imaged later on. I have created electrophoresis gels before in school but we used E-gels which are premade and are much easier to pipette into.
On Wednesday I worked with my mentor and ran a PCR for the first time. PCR is an acronym for “polymerase chain reaction” and in a PCR small synthetic DNA fragments called primers are used to amplify specific segments of a genome. PCRs are done by using a machine called a thermocycler, the thermocycler will take the mixture of DNA and primer and then put it through multiple rounds of DNA synthesis to create amplified sections of the segment of choice. After the PCR was completed the finished products were run on a gel. Unfortunately, the first round of PCR did not work so my mentor and I did the procedure again with higher concentrations and received better results.
On Thursday I worked with a different lab member and was able to track mice’s movements. I split five-minute video segments into specific sets of frames and highlighted the mouse’s movements using tracking software. In order to do this, I had to specifically pinpoint the nose, right and left ears, center, right and left back appendages, and tail base using little dots. The use of this helps to identify behavior in mice.
On Friday I was able to help with another PCR, this time we made the agarose gel instead of using an E-gel.
I got to pose in this Barbie box at the fair expo. The theme this year was retro so there was a collection of fun sets and items scattered around.
My seagull plushie!
Before the week actually started, I was able to do some fun things over the weekend. On Saturday I went to see Inside Out 2 with my fellow intern Katie. We went to a very fancy movie theater where you could order all kinds of restaurant food, not just popcorn.
The following day on Sunday we went to the San Diego County Fair. I had a love-hate relationship with the fair, most people go to the fair in the afternoon while Katie and I are trying to drive home, but many people recommended the fair so we decided to go. Overall the fair was pretty fun, we ate some fried food, I won a giant seagull with a french fry in its mouth, and we were in a hypnotist show.
The trails I run on in the morning.
Aside from my work week I also have really enjoyed going on walks and early morning runs around where I am staying. There is a whole collection of trails right behind the house, most of them are pretty steep but they have great views, especially in the morning when the sun comes up. I also got to make lettuce wraps for my host family this week, they were really good!
That has been it for week 2. Be sure to come back next week!
-Siena
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