I can’t believe that this was the last week of the internship! The summer went by very quickly and I still have so much that I want to do! This week I continued to take videos and pictures of the embryos. Since I had collected all the data I needed, I was able to try some different methods that could possibly make the process easier. We tried to soften the egg shell to see if it made the eggs easier to inject and easier to put on a slide. The eggs did remain easier to inject for a longer period of time, but they were very delicate and didn’t enjoy getting stuck with a needle. Everything on the inside of the cell tended to pour out when the egg got poked with a needle. However, the eggs were considerably easier to flatten on a slide. Usually the egg shell is so firm that it gets broken before it gets compressed. On Thursday I tried injecting Nina’s probe into some barnacle eggs. Since it lights up so well and clearly showed part of the cell in starfish embryos, we though that it was worth a try in barnacle embryos. While the probe was expressed (It light up) in the barnacle embryo it didn’t attach specifically to anything in the embryo. So, it was there but it didn’t show us anything useful. On Friday we had the poster session. I enjoyed getting to share what I had learned with all the people who walked through. A condensed version of my poster is that my research is on barnacle embryos and how cell polarization effects the cleavage furrow pattern. I injected different RNA or protein probes into the embryos and then used a confocal microscope to track the probes in the cell. I discovered that barnacle embryos have an asymmetrical first division that results in one large and one small cell. This division is related to cell polarization. Before first division the cell’s contents are polarized into granular yolk and globular yolk. After the cell divides there is a small cell that contains mostly granular yolk and a large cell that contains most of the globular yolk and a little of the granular yolk. The way that the barnacle embryo accomplishes this is by using two cleavage furrows. The primary furrow forms down the center of the embryo and then a second medial furrow forms and meets the primary furrow in the middle. The cell continues to have this polarization in the later stages. The small cell divides into approximately equal daughter cells but the large cell divides into a large cell that contains mostly globular yolk and a smaller cell that contains mostly granular yolk. The result is three approximately equal small cells and one large cell. I have really enjoyed this internship. It was incredible to be able to learn how to do research and then to work on a project. The skills that I learned are ones that I know will be able to apply later in my career. The professional development sessions have given me more knowledge to use as I continue with my education. Thank you, Dr. Watts, Dr. Emlet, Nicole, and Dr. von Dassow for this incredible opportunity. I also enjoyed getting to spend time with all the other interns and I really enjoyed getting to work with Philip and Nina in the lab. Thanks for the awesome summer everyone!
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AuthorHi! My name is Sadie and I just graduated from Central Oregon Community College in Bend Oregon. I am working in Dr. von Dassow’s lab and I am excited to learn about research and cells. Archives
August 2019
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