To start off my day I wake up. If we have a Howard Hughes seminar I grab some yogurt, maybe even some tea and OJ to start off my day. After listening to the interesting talks from influential researchers I can start my day as one. With Just a short walk down the hall I reach my lab, The Phillip Benfey lab. After a warm symphony of good mornings I creep into the Percival to grab my plants. The Percival is where the plant seedlings are grown up in plates. Given the agar of the plates, and the light and humidity inside the Percival they are in a perfect condition to grow. One of the tasks that I carried out daily was looking at the growth rate of the roots in wild type plants compared to those where the transcription factor STK01 wasn’t expressed. After a marking the tip of the roots for a couple of days I was able to scan the roots in and record the root growth so I could try to use the program R Studio to build a graph showing relationships in STK01 plants. However, marking the growth of plants was usually only the start of my day.
The rest of the day there are many tasks that I could be carrying out. Depending on whether I have done it before or not I am helped by either my post doc or grad student mentors. After they give me a thorough explanation of how everything I’m about to do comes to fruition they assist me in conducting experiments correctly. Such as, by telling me how much I should dilute my primers to run a PCR. After putting my samples containing DNA, primer, and an enzyme in the PCR machine a certain sequence of DNA is amplified. We used this to help us amplify the STK01 gene although further refinements were needed. If I was already acquainted with an experiment then I could get it done myself. One of the first things I could do solo was sterilize and plate seeds. Now I’m a pro. I can either get seeds I have already sterilized from the fridge as long as they haven’t germinated, or pop some seeds into the fume hood with Bleach and HCL to get some purifying chlorine gas. After that I can journey over to the sterile hood, which keeps everything inside it sterile to plate the seeds. Using a pipette I suck up some of the seeds that are suspended in water and place them in a line on the plate. Although it took a while for me not to drop five seeds in one place I enjoy the serene time of plating seeds. Under the sterile hood plating is where one may find answers to their life questions like, “do I have any more butter in the fridge?”
Usually near the end of my research day when things start dialing down or I have finished my experiments for the day I can go on the computer. On the computer if I’m not making graphs to show relationships on R Studio I could be using terminal to navigate through the computers programs and documents. More recently I have had to check the sequences of the genetic sequence I have been amplifying to make sure it is correct. After going through and using a program to check for mistakes I have to order more specific primers that add to a more precise yield.
At some point the day must end and I must leave the lab. After saying my goodbyes I pick up my longboard and glide away into the distance only to return gliding in the next day for more yogurt, tea and OJ.
