End of Third Week- GR

I keep forgetting to post my end of week blogs...

The end of this week was pretty awesome (except for the commute home on Friday, which was a disaster). I got to synthesize a brand new compound! It’s called GR-1 and it's one of a series of compounds that the lab is planning to make.  The 40mg sample is going for a characterization on Monday.  I'm pretty excited about it.  Also, I will be going to a bio lab on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week to see the beginning steps of how the compound will be tested for efficacy.

I learned that if you mix dry ice and acetone, you get a -78 degree solution, which is what we used to freeze the solution of GR-1  and water because of the purification techniques.  It was necessary to freeze it because we needed to lyophilize it.  This process is the gentlest way to evaporate water out of your desired compound.  We were lucky that it started working again, because there was a problem with the vacuum for most of the week.  Good stuff.

Thanks,

GabRoss

My Second Week- Rahul Lakhanpal

So my second week was filled with a lot of interesting material. I feel like I am really getting into swing at the lab. After spending the majority of the first week following the lab graduate and reading documents, I fully began to understand my project. I revised my original proposal to correct it with the true project. I also finished my online models of Human Serum Albumin and TNF-a. I investigated how the Human Serum Albumin could be manipulated and how it could effectively bind to TNF-a. Dr. Li, my PI, sends me on searches sometimes to answer a specific question for the day. So usually it would take me some good time to try and tackle those questions and finding proof of my answer on PubMed. On Wednesday, I got to spend some quality time with Dr. Li and followed him around to see what he was doing. Dr. Li was working on a project which used Human Serum Albumin to help with Breast Cancer treatment. I watched Dr. Li culture cells and how meticulous he needed to be. Dr. Li used a new pipette for everything, and always made sure to steralize everything to make sure no unwanted materials would enter. I watched Dr. Li use the median and such to effectively do this. The biggest project I had for this week was to write a code for a primer that I could use to put the WP9QY peptide into the Human Serum Albumin. It was interesting because all the work I had been doing in the past week, all helped me to successfully write a primer. I found a restriction site that would only cut one site in Human Serum Albumin and had to add the enzyme within my primer. On Thursday I finished my primer and we ordered it online. Despite my sense of accomplishment, Dr. Li told me that primers many times don't work properly... so we will see. My primer is set to come in on either Monday or Tuesday, so once it comes in I will begin PCR and take another huge step in my lab.

Rahul Lakhanpal

End of Second Week - Kate Wang

Ok so this is the actual post that I'm supposed to post today.

As soon as I showed up to work today I was informed that there had been a water leak in Rob's lab that had spread throughout the building into the other labs and rooms as well. By the time I got there, most of the damage was repaired so it wasn't too eventful. Apparently Rob is the official "troublemaker" of the company since he has broken numerous things and also burnt polymer once without realizing it. I guess this makes sense since he is also the youngest employee (other than me but I'm not technically working for them).

Other than that, my week has been pretty un-eventful as I am still running tests on the polymers .

Oh, this might be interesting. So we order one of the proteins that I test from this company called US Biological and one day when Matt was ordering the protein, they suddenly asked if we would also like a jar of salsa and Matt replies, "what?" and so he agreed to try a jar of salsa and it was sitting in the fridge for quite a while since nobody brought in chips. But finally, yesterday someone did and it turned out to actually be quite delicious. Although, the ingredient list was very funny it said things like "tomatoes: not as many as peppers" " peppers: too many to count" and other funny things like that. Oh and it also mentioned that it was not to be tested on humans, etc. etc.

So yeah, that's it for me for this week. Please excuse my terrible grammar, but it's late and I'm tired. 

Half of Week 2 - Kate Wang

Hello there,

Ok so I originally wrote this post on Wednesday but I kept forgetting to hit post.

Anyways, so nothing too eventful has been happening. I've been doing the same things in lab everyday although I do rotate between three different proteins that I test. Rob has also been giving me different polymers to test so I'm up to 5 so far.

I brought in the cookies on Monday and made everyone very happy (brownie points for me). And then today (Wednesday) we had a pizza party as a sort of official meet and greet since the company hired quite a few people in the past three months. There are now 15 people working at CytoSorbents although they don't work for CytoSorbents. Rob was explaining this to me how they work for a company called JoulE and that's who pays them too. Anyway, the pizza party was really great and I finally got to meet everyone although we did have two people missing, because they only work a couple of days a week.

Other than that I don't really know what else to tell you. Also at the party we had a reminder about confidentiality stuff and now I'm getting really paranoid so I apologize that I won't be posting too much stuff about what I do in the lab and more about my lab experience.

Kate Wang

Week 3-PK

Let me start off with an apology... I was way too lazy and tired this week to write two posts. I'm sorry. 
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A lot has happened this week. I got a Princeton Net ID so I can work at home! That makes me feel a little bit better after having been reduced to a VISITOR. However, I can't actually work at home. I'm gonna try to figure this problem out, but as of now, I still can't access the programs and the websites I need to when I'm connected to a different network other than the Princeton wireless. Speaking of programs, I was able to download ImageJ, but I still am not allowed to get Labview. I might be able to get a CD that installs it from another lab, but that's unlikely.
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So throughout this week, I've been practicing and learning how to do the whole procedure safely. The biggest problem is not setting up the experiment, but setting up the optical trap. It is literally the most expensive equipment in the lab, and obviously, no one would want a  mere high schooler to be touching that unless that high schooler knows what he's doing. Thus, I've been slowly been learning each step, such as what to turn on and initialize, what settings to turn everything to, what order I press the many buttons. Surprisingly, even where to save all the data points is a bit confusing at first. Thank goodness I'm good with computers, 'cuz if I wasn't, it would take me a long time to get just this part of the procedure correct.
Recently (as in just yesterday), I experienced the largest obstacle in [is that the right idiom?] the way of me becoming one of the top three ophthalmologists in NY/NJ (one of my many life-long goals xP ). So there is this one part of the procedure that requires UBERLY steady hands and... I learned that my stead hands aren't too steady. :( I need some more practice. Instead of macro-movements, I should do something that requires small movements. Something like... model making! I think... v?v
http://www.showcasemodels.com/resources/E1/3297/picture/08/16967432.jpg
or maybe those anime ones :D
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I got really disappointed one day. I don't know if others have the same problems, but on Tuesday (I think), I basically wasted that whole day. This is because I incubated the E. coli too long. Then, the population grew to a different stage in the growth curve. Because we want to see the response of E. coli at a specific phase in their growth curve, I couldn't use that flask of E. coli. AND, it was too late to make another flask :( I wasted a WHOLE day :'(
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I've done a ton of things that I wouldn't have expected I would need to learn how to do. For example, I learned how to check if a pipette is working precisely as it's supposed to. Also, I've learned how to autoclave various things. It's been a pretty chill experience so far, but I imagine as the experiment moves on, it'll get busier. I also am able to analyze the data, but just a cursory glance suggests that I might need to switch strains due to the lack of interesting things.
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Peace~
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-PK

Timi Opeke (2nd Part of WK 1)

I started midweek last week, so this is officially the second part of my "first week" in the lab. Because my "advisor" has been working on other projects and running errands for the past week, we have met on Friday, Monday, and today.

Things are pretty good so far and I can't complain. Today was my first day working mostly independently in the lab, and was practically my final test before my "advisor" went to Wisconsin for her high school reunion. All in all thing went well, and with some help from a visiting researcher, I was able to get all the work done before my summer league basketball game at 7PM.

Although I would love as much help as I can possibly get in the lab, people are treating me like a visiting researcher so I am being pushed to do a lot of work in the lab independently (but mostly supervised). This is great because there is more pressure to be attentive to detail and take pride in your own work, but now I understand why everyone flocks for free coffee at 4.

Nonetheless it still is exciting and I'm happy to go into the lab even just to clean. Tomorrow I'll be going in to teach a post grad how to create her own active layer so I'm pretty suped. Professor Timi Opeke has a nice ring to it :)

Third Week, Post 1_GR

I can't believe that its already about half way through my time in the lab. It's going by so fast!  Things are basically the same as they've been for the past two weeks.  I keep getting more and more independent in the lab and everything is going well, save for a few broken pipettes and messed up TLC plates, of course.   

On a different note, I'm really liking the relaxed environment of the lab.  It's not at all what I thought it would be.  For example, one day, I came in at around 9:30, and one of the researchers said to me: "Why did you get here so early?"  Then I realized that the lab is pretty much dead until around 10am.  Everyone basically just makes their own hours because as long as your project gets finished in a timely manner, it doesn’t matter what time of day you do it! It's a pretty good system.

Also, I found out today that I will most likely be going over to the med school for a few days either next week or the week after to see how they will be testing one of the compounds that we are making in my lab, which should be pretty cool.

Thanks,

GabRoss