Week 4

My schedule varies a lot depending on the day of the week: Mondays and Fridays are usually the busiest, and I hardly ever have benchwork on Wednesdays. This is because C. elegans take about three days to develop to maturity,...

We have proof of concept that our RNA trans-splicing technology works in vitro. We’ve shown that we can efficiently edit pre-mRNA by transfecting and transducing Human Embryonic Kidney cells (HEK293) and are planning to move into patient-derived cardiomyocytes (human heart...

As one would expect, working in a tissue engineering lab revolves around one main thing: cells! In the lab there are myriads of ways to manipulate and care for cells and ensure that they are happy. In a sense, every...

My time in the Volkan Lab consists of primarily two procedures, PCR/running gels and ChIP (chromatin immunoprecipitation). This means that my day is usually split into half collecting/dissecting fruit flies and pipetting for these two procedures. I usually start my...

My first stop on my way into the lab is my little lab bench/office space to drop off my backpack. Then, I always go to the shared office space (where there is usually fresh food someone brought) to check in...

While every day has a different to-do list, two tasks remain consistent: collections and dissections. Every morning, we check our boxes of fly vials for the ones we need to collect from. With tons of crosses going at the same...

A typical day at the Wright lab usually starts early in the morning. I get dressed in long sleeves, thick pants, and hiking boots and meet up with the two graduate students I am working with who pick me up...

In the Chilkoti lab, we work to create different proteins that could potentially improve drug delivery. To do this, bacteria must be constantly transformed, grown, and lysed. Each step takes hours, and depends on whether or not the previous step...

Tadross lab is known for its novel drug delivery system called DART (Drugs Acutely Restricted by Tethering) that allows delivery of conventional small-molecule drugs to specific cell sub-types. It is based on a covalent interaction between HaloTag protein and a...

Every day in my lab, like many of my colleagues, is a bit different. I start of the day with a meeting with my mentor Liz and then get to work on modeling in R. Basically, we can train the...

I never thought I'd be handling rodents so closely, but lately, my life seems to revolve around them. As mentioned in my previous blog posts, my mentor and I are studying the impact of particular hydrogels on damaged stroke tissue...

A day in the life of the Bilbo lab usually has some routine tasks that I do every day and then usually I learn a new lab procedure. For instance, in the morning I fill syringes full of ethanol for...