Today June 13, 2011 was my first day working in an official lab.
My day started at 6 o'clock when I woke up to get ready to catch my 7: 27 train from Trenton to Philadelphia. My mom decided she wanted to go to the lab with me the first day, so she could see how my commute would work. We planned to leave early so we could get the donuts for my PI and the grad student! We reached Philadelphia and at about 9 o'clock we got to my lab. Unfortunately, Dr. Li was stuck in traffic and didn't get to the lab at 10. (We also decided from now on, I should come in at 10 too... more sleep!). Once Dr. Li got there, he showed me around the lab and where I would be working. Since Dr. Li's NIH grant and interview is due on Friday, he planned to finish it by this Tuesday. Thus, today and tomorrow, I would/will not be able to spend a lot of time working with him. So instead of sitting ideally, throughout the morning, Dr. Li and the Grad student, Michelle, gave me even more readings! I diligently finished the readings and learned even more about the protein, Human Serum Albumin, that I will be working with. When I was reading these articles I had massive déjà vu because of Mr. Brown's AP Bio Molecular Biology section. Everything we learned in AP Bio was essential to this project: cDNA, splicing, primers, restriction enzymes etc. The tour and readings took the majority of the morning and by...
12: 30, I was really hungry. The grad student had not moved an inch and was glued on fixing/modifying the protein Dr. Li sent her. Then my stomach let out the loudest grumble, and she started to laugh. She told me that I could eat lunch whenever I wanted to, I sighed in relief and quickly went to the cafeteria to eat. After lunch, Dr. Li came in and showed me how to use two programs: Omiga and Chimera. On Omiga I listed the nucleotide sequence for human serum albumin and it translated them into codons and proteins! After that, I used a feature on the program which allowed me to see all the possible cutting spots by going through each common restriction enzyme. As I left Dr. Li left me with a message. He said in the next six weeks, I will learn how to go from step 0 to officially starting a lab. Today was Day 1 in that process. I look to learn more and have even more fun in the next 29 work days!
Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia,
Rahul Lakhanpal
My day started at 6 o'clock when I woke up to get ready to catch my 7: 27 train from Trenton to Philadelphia. My mom decided she wanted to go to the lab with me the first day, so she could see how my commute would work. We planned to leave early so we could get the donuts for my PI and the grad student! We reached Philadelphia and at about 9 o'clock we got to my lab. Unfortunately, Dr. Li was stuck in traffic and didn't get to the lab at 10. (We also decided from now on, I should come in at 10 too... more sleep!). Once Dr. Li got there, he showed me around the lab and where I would be working. Since Dr. Li's NIH grant and interview is due on Friday, he planned to finish it by this Tuesday. Thus, today and tomorrow, I would/will not be able to spend a lot of time working with him. So instead of sitting ideally, throughout the morning, Dr. Li and the Grad student, Michelle, gave me even more readings! I diligently finished the readings and learned even more about the protein, Human Serum Albumin, that I will be working with. When I was reading these articles I had massive déjà vu because of Mr. Brown's AP Bio Molecular Biology section. Everything we learned in AP Bio was essential to this project: cDNA, splicing, primers, restriction enzymes etc. The tour and readings took the majority of the morning and by...
12: 30, I was really hungry. The grad student had not moved an inch and was glued on fixing/modifying the protein Dr. Li sent her. Then my stomach let out the loudest grumble, and she started to laugh. She told me that I could eat lunch whenever I wanted to, I sighed in relief and quickly went to the cafeteria to eat. After lunch, Dr. Li came in and showed me how to use two programs: Omiga and Chimera. On Omiga I listed the nucleotide sequence for human serum albumin and it translated them into codons and proteins! After that, I used a feature on the program which allowed me to see all the possible cutting spots by going through each common restriction enzyme. As I left Dr. Li left me with a message. He said in the next six weeks, I will learn how to go from step 0 to officially starting a lab. Today was Day 1 in that process. I look to learn more and have even more fun in the next 29 work days!
Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia,
Rahul Lakhanpal
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