Jenny Lee - Entry #2 at CHLA

Hey guys! I'm finishing up my third week here at CHLA and about to head off to Mongolia with a few lab members tomorrow! Although most of my days I have quite a lot of downtime, today was pretty exciting because Dr. Peretz visited! (Thank you for visiting!) The weather was great and we had a nice Italian lunch with my PI and another person that works in the lab. Unfortunately, the lab director and one of the girls I work with already left for Mongolia, but I was able to show her the human lung samples I am working with. Currently I am sitting here as the lungs are being washed in the cold room. (There is a lot of preparation that goes into attaching antibodies on these samples. Today, I am washing them 5 times with a solution for one hour each.)

For the past one and a half weeks, I've basically been doing the same things as I have mentioned in my first blog post. I don't think specific details would be any fun or informative, but here's the big picture. Although there are a lot of studies and papers that focus on the development and cells of the mice lungs, there really isn't much knowledge on the human lungs. My PI (Dr. Al Alam, but we just call her Denise) decided that if we're ultimately trying to find cures for human lung diseases, it only makes sense to study the human lung! We were fortunate enough to get human fetal lung samples, ages ranging from 10 weeks to 16 weeks. We are staining the lungs with antibodies so that we can get pictures and models that show the progression and development of the human lung. Right now we are following a protocol that has previously been used to stain mice - but it works fantastic on human tissues! Fixing, washing, mounting, and photographing the lung samples take about a week in total, although the techniques itself aren't very complicated. 

Outside of the Dr. Peretz's visit, today was also a great day because we were able to 3D image a lung sample! We were previously looking and taking pictures of the lungs under a dissecting scope, but it is often difficult to get clear images because some of the samples are too big. And because we want to study the development of the human lung, a 3D image would be helpful in analyzing that. It looked amazing - and although it will take some more practice and patience to 3D image all of our current samples, it will all be worth it.

I've also been doing other things besides just sitting and washing the lung samples. I went to a PhD defense, a couple more lab seminars, a meeting on RNA sequencing technology, and I brought donuts one day (which everyone really enjoyed). There is also another research observer working with us - Victor. It's cool having Victor and Emily around because they're both super smart, and company is always nice, especially on the more quiet days.

Overall, my first three weeks have been great. I've gotten closer to my PI and the people I work with. The lab director (Dr. Warburton) has been really pleased with our work so far, and I hope that we can continue to make some great discoveries in August. I am slowly getting ready for Mongolia and will definitely upload some pictures of my time there! Sorry about the lack of pictures right now!