This past week at OIMB has been a straight shot into working on my project. Even though it doesn’t feel like I’ve done much in terms of fleshing out an entire designed experiment, I really value George’s approach to research. Being able to work together to both work hands-on and learn as I go with the understanding that science isn’t always going to give you what you expect has really encouraged me to ask questions and just be more enthusiastic overall about the work that I am doing.
Throughout the week I’ve been working with both George and Maureen to generate starfish eggs that have either a calcium sensor or added fluorescing proteins that essentially makes certain parts of the cell light up under a fluorescent microscope. Looking at those with the calcium sensor, we want to check that both the eggs and the larvae have the calcium sensor by looking for this fluorescence (lighting up). Since last week, we have fertilized and cultured larvae with this GCaMP calcium sensor to then study and image movies to detect signaling observed thanks to the calcium sensor. We even introduced different stimuli, such as adding food to the slide with larvae to see whether or not that would show any obvious response seen as the flashing of these skin cells.
Now, conducting research in the lab along with learning how to use at least 5 different microscopes has been fun, but I was super stoked about the opportunity to go camping this past Friday along tide pooling the next morning. I had never been camping or tide pooling, so this was a completely new experience for me. Sleeping outdoors wasn’t the most comfortable, but the experience let me know that I’m definitely down to go camping again. Tide-pooling that Saturday morning, while a little chilly, was great (that is if I disregard the muscle soreness I had after, I’m a lot more out of shape than I thought lol). I had never seen anything like it, trekking through water up to my waist, trapezing (aka trying not to fall) over algae covered rock (super slippery btw), and being able to observe just how these organisms we work with in the lab exist in the wild was something I never did a great job of imagining. But seeing these animals in their natural habitat only made me more excited to delve into the behaviors that can’t be observed in this environment but need to be seen up close and personal in the lab. It’s safe to say I don’t plan on accidentally slipping and falling on a sea urchin while tide pooling any time soon. So, until next week… :)
1 Comment
Mary Jackson
7/11/2021 01:32:07 pm
Wow! I'm enjoying seeing and learning about your research through your lens. It's new to me, very interesting, and amazing. Thanks for adding the side notes in parenthesis and breaking things down so that I can understand. Continue to learn, grow, and have fun.
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