Work in the Telen lab has yet to fall short of being a pleasant experience. I walk in every morning and feel welcomed by its members. I normally take the first half hour or so to organize data from the previous day’s work and respond to emails. Once that’s finished I start gathering data for the day
For my project, I have to collect samples of intracellular and extracellular ATP. This means that a majority of my days thus far have been spent collecting samples of blood from the hospital, cleaning the blood of its plasma contents, incubating it at 37 degrees Celsius to recreate human conditions for the cells, breaking all of the cells open and extracting their ATP. The process involves other steps along the way like centrifuging which takes up more than an hour of time but this is the meat of what I do.
Other days I have to measure out and compare the ATP from the different patients that I’ve extracted in their respective buffers. What may sound like a simple process, relative to extracting the ATP, actually takes a little longer. These days are spent in a neighboring building in a lab that we collaborate with. I use what’s known as a bioluminescence assay to measure the ATP content. Constructing the assay isn’t very complicated but it is very procedure heavy. I’m essentially spending an entire day labelling tubes and constructing my assay so that, once it’s done, I can gather data from samples that takes the computer 5 minutes-if that-to read.
These are probably some of my favorite days. Even though the process can get really tedious, finally getting results at the end of the day more than compensates for everything I did before. Getting results and having the opportunity to analyze them and make comparisons, I’m coming to realize, is a very rewarding experience. These two things have been the bulk of what I spend my time doing and constitute “a typical day” in the Telen lab.
