This week was really chill at the lab. Most of the students working in my lab were writing up their grant requests for next year’s research, so there was less projects for me to do this week. I started out the week using the super resolution microscope on one of my SiR-DNA stained slides. Unfortunately, when I tried to image it in super-res I would only get a micron or two of depth in our image before the sample photobleached. This means that the laser in the microscope excited the fluorescent tag to the point that it denatured and didn’t light up any more. This could’ve been caused by the sample being dry, laser intensity being too high, or because I didn’t use a super-res STORM buffer. The image featured here doesn’t look to bad, however it doesn’t really show the depth as well in that point of view. If you dragged and interacted with the image you could definitely tell. In this image, the clusters of blue dots is nuclei. Each dot is a SiR-DNA fluorescent tag and this microscope can zoom down to the molecule level in the image it produces which is super super cool. I have a video that really shows how fascinating of an interface it is but couldn’t put that in the blog.
On Tuesday, at a lab meeting, I gave a presentation on what I had been doing for the previous 5 weeks. In my presentation, the link is here, https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1p9zA7koZD-Bx4mlHTnLZUxYd2-2FtRKbXVf2pr8xS4s/edit?usp=sharing, I talked about how I had been helping this PHD student, Anthony, with his research for his paper. He is currently trying to come up with code and procedure that would allow one to identify the location of a smaller widefield image, for example 60x on the microscope, within its larger(20x) wide field counterpart. This project involves a lot of coding techniques and imaging techniques which is what I have mostly been working on the whole summer. Below is a visual representation of the larger project. How does one find the location of the smaller image in the bigger one? They are both the same sample just on different microscopes and different magnifications.
For the rest of the week, I didn’t have much else to do. I prepared more slides with Poly d Lysine and gelatin. I segmented tissue for my slides, fixed, washed, and stained these slides with SiR-DNA. I don’t know if I mentioned this in previous weeks blog but every week for the past three weeks Anthony and I have been doing a journal club. This means that he gives me one or two research papers a week to read, take notes, prepare a presentation on, and talk about. This has been cool as it helps improve my knowledge about what is going on in the lab. Reading research papers is hard though, but it is a valuable skill which is important for science. Below is a picture of one of my presentations. In this pic I have images from the paper that I discuss with Anthony about what they mean. The paper that I read and discussed this week was about STORM super-res imaging. I have think here if anyone is interested in checking it out, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G96NUfH4ofoQLwvQD8lZewxyUKNKxYKIoi2DWY1At1U/edit?usp=sharing.
Friday was my last day in the lab. I got to go to the Brown engineering school with some people from my lab and we talked with some computer science faculty and students about using virtual reality to create an interface and display for visualizing our super-res storm data. The global IT shutdown also impacted our lab on Friday too. It shut down both of our super-res microscopes in the lab. But being my last day I said goodbye to everyone and we got a lab picture before I left. I am on the far right, Anthony is in the middle in the black sweatshirt, and my Professor, Nicola Neretti, is standing second farthest left.
Also because of the IT shut down, my flight which was originally scheduled for Saturday was cancelled, so I ended up rescheduling and flying out Sunday morning from Boston. On Friday night, I went out to dinner with my roommate and some other friends as my going away event. We also went exploring the city after which is what this picture is from. In addition to that, I experience my last Providence sunset over the city from Prospect Terrace that night too. I included that picture as well.
I also went to dinner on Saturday night with Anthony, the student who I had been working closest with all summer. Overall this experience has been amazing and a great opportunity. It was so cool checking out the East Coast this summer, living away from home, and studying real science in a lab. I am especially grateful for Sarah Holbrooke and my Professor, Nicola Neretti, for setting up this opportunity for me.
There are no comments published yet.