In my experience so far, no two days in lab have been the same. There are a couple reasons why this is the case.
For starters, my work involves two different parties. I work in the Buchler Lab with my mentor, Dr. Nick Buchler, and I also work the Duke iGEM team in their lab in Teer. Some days I’m in one lab, some days I’m in the other, and some days I’m in both.
Secondly, because Nick is allowing me to do my own research verses working under a grad student, my day to day work is constantly evolving as my project does. Having this level of independence has pros and cons. On one hand I face a learning curve because I am on my own. But at the same time that independence forces me to become self-proficient much quicker than if I had someone helping me. Also, doing my own work that I’m interested in gives me a creative fulfillment that I don’t think I would get if I was working on someone else’s project. I’m really grateful to Nick for being such a great mentor.
Because my experience has been so dynamic, it’s too hard to describe an average day, so I will try to summarize what each week has been like so far.
Week 1: Lots and Lots and Lots of Reading!
I had already done some reading that Nick gave me before the program started in order to understand his research, but this week involved A LOT of reading for the purpose of finding inspiration for my project.
Week 2: Trial and Error
After a week of reading, I started to get some ideas for my project. However, these ideas had to get approved by Nick before I could pursue them. This week consisted mostly of me coming up with an idea, presenting it to Nick, and then Nick telling me that the idea was unfeasible for one reason or another, be it lack of experimental data or lack of information on the plasmid constructs involved. Despite this, each day I came closer and closer to a good idea.
Week 3: Detective Work
At the beginning of the week I finally came up with an idea good enough to pursue: looking for the maximum possible ultrasensitivity that could be achieved in a CRISPR/Cas9 system using multiple binding sites and decoy binding sites. However, I was missing some crucial information on iGEM’s past work, the most important being what kind of promoters were used in the plasmid construct. After going through iGEM’s journal records, there was still a lot of important information that was missing, so I had to arrange meetings with members of last year’s iGEM team and see if they remembered what I was looking for. As I searched, I designed constructs of the plasmids I would use during my experiment and filled in the missing information on my computer. By the end of the week, I had learned everything I needed to know in order to start my experiment. Special thanks to TJ Ciesla for putting up with my constant harassment.
Week 4: Preparation and Travel
This week involved gathering all the different pieces I needed to make my plasmid and designing the synthetic sequences I would need to order. It was a short lab week though, because I was at University of Maryland on Thursday and Friday for an iGEM conference.
All in all, no two days have been the same, but everyday I am learning something new.
And here are this week’s science memes.
