I can’t believe it’s the last week already. This entire summer has felt like a weird dream. The fact that I was able to form so many new relationships while also learning more than I could have imagined in getting to conduct research. Our final posters were due Tuesday for a final review and printing. I can’t say that I wasn’t glad to finally be done making final little tweaks and edits to the poster; that final press of the send button ushering in a wave of relief. However, right after, I was already sad, as this poster was the culmination of this summer’s work, so with its completion, the realization that I wouldn’t be in Oregon in a week was a sad shock of reality. I found myself becoming conscious of the fleeting moments, from my last time sorting eggs, to locking up the lab for the last time. By the end of the week, I had processed leaving and how thankful I was for all of the different experiences I had this summer. Presenting my poster was a great experience, and a lot less intimidating than previously anticipated. All of the mentors, Richard specifically, always emphasizes that you are the one who knows your project the best. But I don’t think it is until this moment, actually explaining your formalized research, that this statement actually makes sense, at least for me. It’s primarily from the stress of research and actively putting the poster together, but this same thing that makes the poster session so easy. I’m so glad we had several opportunities to get critiques and edit throughout the poster making process. I think they definitely contributed to how smoothly things went. I’ve added some pictures of little things I saw this week . I’ve also added a picture of my poster, I did spend numerous hours on it (and I think it’s not too bad lol). Well, I guess that’s a wrap on the summer. Thank you, George for mentoring me and Maureen for helping me out with everything.
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Week 8 has been quite the week, from consistently editing my poster to continuing injections and imaging for my second project. I can’t even count how many times the content, image sizes, and overall layout of my poster have changed. At this point, I’ve elected to treat it as the ever-shifting culmination of my summer’s work, with the intrinsic property of always needing edits. That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed being able to put all of my work together in a way that really highlights what we found this summer. My improvement in how long it takes me to inject the eggs itself is only proof of how much I have learned and grown in the past 2 months lol. While working on posters took up a large part of my week, there were a few highlights worth mentioning. For instance, George’s graduate student Erin brought in a whole bucket of blueberries (which were delicious by the way), a nice and unexpected mid-week pick-me-up. Also, this past Saturday me and some of the other REU interns went to Hall Lake, which is a beautiful lake with sand dunes that let you look out to the ocean. I’m surprised I even swam out as far as I did (for those of you that know my swimming skills they are sub-par) (a little ironic for someone working in marine biology but what can you do lol). Even still, this week has been a nice mix of work and relaxation. Wrapping up everything has been hard, along with the bittersweet idea of leaving Oregon. I have built a lot of really cool relationships with all of the other interns; it’s going to be so sad to have to say goodbye to all of these people that have made my summer so special :(. Well, until next week for my last entry…
I can’t believe that after this week, it’s only two weeks until I’ll be back home in Atlanta! I hate to say that it feels like everything is winding up, but with poster preparations and presentations in the near future I fear time has caught up with me. I remember saying, “Hey, even if I hate it, it’s literally only two months, summer’s gonna fly by,” but you never actually think about how it feels when the end is actually approaching. This week I’ve been working on preparing a small presentation for Saturday, where along with the other REU’s, I will be talking to some Oregon high schoolers about what I have been working on this summer as well as how I got from high school to where I am now. I’m super excited to share as I remember being in high school and having absolutely zero clue as to what my future career would look like.
At the start of this week, I went on a series of plankton tows, to try and collect some microorganisms to use in some final experiments with my larvae. However, finding the fast-swimming microorganisms proved to be a little more difficult than I thought, so I wasn’t able to complete any trials of my larvae tethered to see if they would react to other organisms as stimuli.
A little later this week, George, Maureen, and I injected some eggs with the protein encoding mRNA to make both the microtubules of the spindle apparatus as well as the chromosomes fluoresce under the microscope. However, due to some timing issues, we didn’t really get to see anything of use :(. Don’t worry though, I’m attaching some videos we took over the last few weeks of how these caffeine treatments affect both first and second meiosis. We treated eggs with caffeine both prior to meiosis I and meiosis II, to see if we would get a breakdown of the spindle apparatus. Not only did we see that, but after the breakdown of the spindle, when we washed the eggs with filtered sea water, we saw it come back. Eggs treated before either meiosis I or II, once washed out, were even able to continue on to expel a polar body (the end of meiosis).
In addition to my videos, I just wanted to include a couple pictures I took throughout the week; me at the docks, along with some pretty pics of the sky. Well, until next week…:)
This past weekend was a nice bit of fun before getting into work this week as me and a few other REU interns went up to Portland for the weekend. We went to the International Rose Test Garden, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, at least 5 thrift stores, and had some really good food along the way. This week I also conducted more trials of the boundary experiments with the larvae to see if they would actually move to interact with the beads rather than just stopping right after colliding with them. After remaking slides and sitting in front of a computer for a couple of hours just watching the larvae, I was able to catch a couple instances of them actually swimming and encountering the beads!! The best instances were when the larvae would run into the bead and it would run along the edge of the larvae’s surface so I could observe how the skin cells fluorescing were primarily those that the bead was directly touching. I guess it just took messing around with the coverslip that goes over the slide; the larvae might have been a little too squished last time (but they could still swim so I’m not exactly sure if this is true).
This week George also showed me how to tether the larvae using a really small pipette that can grab and hold the larvae so we can expose them to different stimuli. I also took a plankton tow, which is where I use a really small net to catch small organisms in the water and took them back to the lab to use them in my experiments with the tethered larvae. I specifically wanted bivalve veligers, which look like little clams, as they swim really fast. We haven’t yet conducted trials with the tethered larvae and the fast-passing swimmers, but we always have next week!! This past week has been fun both in and outside of work. Last weekend was super fun as me and a few of the other REU interns went to Eugene for the weekend! It was such a nice chance to get out and actually experience the summer heat I’m used to (lol). The transition from Georgia to Oregon has had me missing the heat of summer (crazy right?). We actually ended up visiting this really pretty watering hole, where there was rock sliding and some pretty cool places to jump off of too, I just wish all of the interns could’ve come along! This week I’ve been working more with George and Maureen to conduct more trials on my sea star larvae. Our main goal was to make a slide where they would interact with a boundary so we could image them under the fluorescing microscope to observe any signaling. We did run into a few difficulties as we needed something that we could add to the slide that would actually work as a boundary. We tried 10-micron (very, very small) glass beads (didn’t see much), considered sand (too big), and finally settled on these plastic beads that were about 100 microns (about ten times bigger than the glass beads). However, after finding these plastic beads, when we tried adding them to the slide, they just moved to the edge of the water droplet instead of actually sitting on the slide, not ideal when our experiments need the larvae to be able to collide with the beads. I tried supergluing them to a prepared slide; however, it was hard to separate each individual bead and the slide ended up being too thick to actually get any good videos. George helped by giving me the advice to treat the beads with a protein that would keep them from moving to the edge of the water droplet and clumping together, and it worked!! I’ve done some imaging of the larvae interacting with the artificial boundaries, but it’s really hard to observe localized signaling because for some reason the larvae just stop swimming?? Guess we’ll just have to keep on moving, and hope the larvae do to. Until next week… :)
This week has been a lot of lab work, but I can’t say I haven’t been enjoying it. We started this week imaging larvae with the GCaMP sensor for detection of electrical signaling. George and I even went down to the dock to take a plankton tow, which is when you cast a net with really small threading to catch microorganisms you wouldn’t typically see. Using some of these organisms that swim considerably faster than our larvae, we subjected the larvae to some fast-passing events to observe whether the larvae showed a response, i.e., lighting up under the fluorescing microscope. We also observed passing events of other larvae to detect electrical signaling events, and guess what, we did!! Not only did they do it once, but twice!
While working with the larvae, I’ve also been working on that second project I mentioned looking at how caffeine treatment can disrupt meiosis and cause sea star eggs to develop into cells that have twice as many chromosomes as they normally would. George and I microinjected sea star eggs with two fluorescing proteins, one that highlights the microtubules that make up the spindle that forms during meiosis, and another one that lights up the chromosomes that are split during meiosis. We then took matured sea star eggs and under a microscope, took a few videos of normal meiosis. You can see in the video below, the spindle apparatus (left panel, gold color) assembles, and microtubules attach to chromosomes (right panel, blue color) to bring them to the middle and then segregate into two cells (one is really small), after which the apparatus disassembles. When cells were subjected to caffeine treatment prior to the separation of chromosomes, we saw a complete disassembly of the spindle apparatus, preventing meiosis from continuing. However, when we flushed the caffeine from the eggs with sea water, they completely recovered and completed meiosis (I’ll add videos of this next week)! The recovery rate was really fast too!!
Socially, this week has been pretty chill. I’ve taken a few trips to OIMB beach, helped cook a really good meal with friends, and taken a few walks through the woods. Being able to be in an environment where I can both grow academically while not sacrificing these small experiences has been really enlightening. I’ve found myself more excited to head to the lab with a clear head after a quiet walk wandering through the trees (maybe I just really like being in the forest lol). Well, until next week… :)
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… :)
If you had asked me a year ago what I thought my future in research would look like I likely would’ve answered with a shrug and even questioned whether research is the path I would be most interested in pursuing. Living in the “time of Corona” has made the concept of a future career hazy. Now, that’s not to say I did not fantasize about where I saw myself in ten years, but when almost half of your under-graduate experience is spent attempting to learn organic chemistry mechanisms and the kinematics of biochemistry through a 13-inch laptop screen, the future seems like a faraway ship floating somewhere off in the distance. So, when I took a random shot and applied for this REU, I didn’t think much of the potential that receiving this position would provide for me to expand and learn more about the different areas of marine biology I had never even considered before. As a brief introduction, hi! My name is MaKenzie Drowns and I am currently a fourth-year student at the University of Georgia. I am a biochemistry major and am pursuing both a biology and linguistics major as well. Throughout my time at UGA I have had the opportunity to conduct research on both poplar and tobacco plants to identify a new way to make genetic edits to these plants that would allow for new genetically modified plants to be generated faster than previous methods have allowed. I enjoy reading, listening to music, and generally just spending time in nature. While I have never before worked with marine organisms, I am very excited to work with George von Dassow in his lab and use some of the skills I have previously acquired through research to grow and develop an understanding of cells and embryos. This summer, under the advisement of Dr. von Dassow I will be potentially tackling two very interesting ideas. The first would be delivering a calcium sensor to sea star larvae to detect electrical signaling of cells that line the surface of their bodies. We will expose the larvae to different stimuli and through video imaging of larvae see how their skin cells signal or “message” each other electrically as a response to these stimuli in the near-field fluid zone, i.e. the area of water near the larvae’s surface. The second project will also be using sea star eggs to see how caffeine treatment can cause sea star eggs to develop into cells that have twice as many chromosomes as normal sea star eggs. We will be looking at caffeine’s influence on sea star meiosis and looking into whether there are any effects on mitosis, as well as whether caffeine also affects the layer of protein underlying the plasma membrane in cells responsible for different functions such as controlling the shape of a cell. While I’ve been doing a lot of learning these past two weeks, I haven’t been ‘trapped’ in some dark corner of the lab and have had the opportunity to do some pretty fun stuff outside. Only my first week at OIMB, a random trip to watch the sunset at Simpson’s Reef resulted in a killer whale sighting! Not only one, but a pod! Some have lived here 6 years and only seen orcas once, so it’s pretty safe to say this experience started out on the right foot. I also had the chance to ride out to the bay with my fellow REU interns and catch some pretty big dungeness crabs (yum lol), even though we had to toss them back. I’ve explored tunnels and hiking trails, we even stumbled upon an old air force lookout with some pretty rad looking local art. I can say with confidence these past two weeks have been an experience I won’t take for granted. I can’t wait to update you guys next week on just what I’ve been up to at OIMB! :) |
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