Halfway through our program, wow! As I'm writing this, I am monitoring barnacle embryos under a new drug treatment, which is Latrunculin. Latrunculin is another actin inhibitor but I’m still unsure about the effect it has in the cells because they are not behaving like they do with Cyt-B, nor having a consistent effect. I started treating bigger groups in dishes to raise them to their larvae stage and I’m waiting to see the results. I didn't consider all the things that can affect the cells when raising them like dehydration, bacteria, etc, so some of the treatments were purely experimental. The barnacles that I had this week weren't active enough and I ended up postponing a lot of my work because I`m pretty much dependent on their matings. To keep me busy, I checked sperm released under the microscope to see the form of the filaments. Luckily, Thursday I got new barnacles from the docks and I was able to set some time-lapses with their embryos. This week was kind of quiet and calm because all of my mentors were out of the city so Gina and I were working while listening to some music, practicing our presentations (they ended up being great), and decorating our lab with plants. Not being able to do my experiments effectively and all the waiting time between them made me feel as if I didn't progress much and that pushed my mental health down a bit. On to the fun side, the past weekend J`mie and I embarked on an unexpected adventure to North Bend where we ended up having great Chinese food and hanging around in a parking lot (that also didnt go as planned haha). For Victoria, Annika, Chloe, and I, weekends also mean movie nights. We watch our all-time favorites movies with snacks, and it's always a great time. I am really looking forward to this weekend as I haven't been feeling my best lately. I've been taking lots of walks to appreciate nature as it's very different from where I come from and that has helped clear my mind a lot. I know when things don`t go as planned we tend to get overwhelmed very easily, but a lesson that I learned this week is to, no matter what, try to take advantage of your surroundings and the opportunities in front of you. I love that in this program, I am learning how science really is. You can't always get successful results because for new discoveries to happen, there have to be failed attempts too, so I am not mad nor upset on how the week turned out. I am actually grateful because it allowed me to learn new lab techniques and improve the ones I already had. All I can tell you for now is I will keep trying my hardest and have fun in the process <3
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Sherlyn SanchezHello :) I'm Sher, a first-gen biology student transferring to UCSD and passionate about science. This summer I'll be working in George von Dassow`s lab doing barnacle embryology research. In this blog, I'll be sharing some of my adventures and life updates at the OIMB. Archives
August 2022
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