I would like to preface my blog post by saying that I have the worst luck in the world, and as a result of that luck, I am always sick. Sadly, I cannot even escape that terrible luck out in California, as on the first day of working in the lab, I nearly killed myself. By eating a cashew.
Sadly, the whole situation could have been avoided. It was one in the afternoon, and the entire lab was going to lunch at some cafeteria. I tagged along, and when we got to the cafeteria, I realized there was not much selection in food, so I just picked whatever chicken they had that day. I paid for it, went to sit down with the other people in my lab, and I took a bite of lunch. Uh oh. Apparently a sign near the chicken said "CONTAINS NUTS" (I am allergic to some nuts) in big, red letters, but my clearly attentive self missed the sign, and as a result, I ate the chicken. Well, right as I took a bite, I knew that I was in trouble, but I also knew that if I stopped eating, I probably would be able to survive the rest of the day. I lasted about two hours until I realized that I needed to get back to my apartment and take some medication. Luckily for me, the person I was shadowing for the day (Joseph, not the person I am working with) came in on Sunday and finished his work early, so I was able to leave, get home, take lots of allergy medication and then fall into a sixteen hour benadryl induced coma. What a great first day!
Thankfully, the rest of my week has been much better than that first day. On Tuesday, I was able to meet Matt, the grad student who I will be working with for the next few weeks. He was able to show me what he was working on. He was working with yeast that had mutated human genes that were found in patients with ALS integrated into its genome, and he was trying to see if the genes caused the yeast cells to die. The reason that Matt, and most of the lab, uses yeast genes to test for mutations in ALS genes is because of the similarities in yeast and the cells of the brain and the spinal cord. Matt was growing these cells in a nutrient rich broth and with specific anti-bodies that would attach to specific proteins translated by the genes Matt inserted into the cells.
Matt also has his thesis due soon for his PhD, so he has spent much of the week writing. As a result, I have kind of bounced around people in the lab trying to see and help with as much as possible. I was able to watch someone in the lab dissect a mouse in order to test on the eye and optical nerve, which was really cool, as the optical nerve about the size of a hair and in order to dissect it it needs to be done under a microscope. I have also tried to help out others in the lab, and today, I started my 'own' project with an undergrad student, Olivia. We will be running synthetic genetic arrays on samples of yeast cells with the C9orf72 gene inserted into it (a known ALS causing gene), along with other genes that may or may not help in decreasing the C9orf72 affect on the cell. Today, we began by growing the yeast cells that we will be running the array on.
So far, my time in California has been great (minus the first day), and I am really happy I came out here. And while the lab has been great, it has also been really cool just exploring the area. I really love San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area, especially all of the nature around here. It's really cool that I can be walking through San Francisco one minute and then through a Redwood Tree forest an hour later. All and all, a great week at Stanford.
No comments:
Post a Comment