Sabine Week 1

I’m Sabine Lindler, and my internship is in Scarborough, Maine, at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute (MMCRI). I’m working under Dr. Robert Koza, who studies the role of epigenetics in obesity.

Upon starting my internship, I had no idea what epigenetics meant, so I will explain what it means. For a while, it has been commonly believed that two factors determine why a person (or any living thing, for that matter) is the way it is. These two factors are nature and nurture, nature meaning genetic code and nurture meaning environmental influences. However, Dr. Koza did an experiment in which he had genetically identical mice and fed them all the same high fat diet, and monitored them very closely so that they had the same environmental influences. Despite having the same nature and nurture, some of the mice gained significantly more weight than others. He believes that epigenetics accounts for this difference in weight gain, so that is what he is investigating in his experiment.

Epigenetics has to do with gene expression. I read an article about identical twins that compared the concept of epigenitics and gene expression to a piano. This analogy helped me grasp the concept. The gene sequence can be thought of as a keyboard on a piano. Because the mice were genetically identical, they all had the same keys. Epigenetics determines when and how these keys are played. This way, identical pianos can play different tunes even if they have the exact same set of keys. Similarly, genetically identical mice can be very different even though they have the same genetic code. Their genes are just being expressed differently.

Dr. Koza is essentially conducting a study with mice to find out which genes are more highly expressed in the fat mice compared to the thin mice. He is helping me work on a small part of his experiment that involves six mice.

Now that I’ve explained what my internship is about, I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to!

I arrived a couple days early with my dad so that I could participate in a track meet. I didn’t really train for it, but not many people competed so I was the only one in my age/gender group and so by default I got first place in the 800 meter and 1500 meter! Also, the transition to sea level makes it wonderfully easy to run with all the extra oxygen in the air. I also spent some time eating delicious food with my dad and walked on the beach with him and such.

I’m living with a host family. They are very nice, and I’m getting along quite well. It’s not awkward at all, which I really enjoy. Super cool people. They even borrowed a car so that I can use theirs to drive to the lab every day, which was incredibly nice of them! I mean, they got me a CAR! Best host family ever!

My first day at the lab was mostly safety orientation and stuff like that. Dr. Koza (Rob) talked to me briefly to give me a rough overview of the experiment.

On the second day, during the first 30 minutes, Rob held a lab meeting in which he explained what was going on in the part of the experiment that I would be involved in with the six mice. He barreled through some really complex explanations at a horrifyingly fast pace. He is VERY smart and I understood hardly any of it. I was bombarded with lots of long scientific words and it was quite overwhelming. I had never been educated on any of that material before. Rob thought it was a quick, simple explanation, but I thought otherwise. To be honest I had almost no idea what was going on. I got a little freaked out by this, but I figured that as the days went by, the pieces would fall into place, and I would gain better understanding. Even now, I’m starting to figure a lot of it out, which is reassuring.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day doing a dull course on the computer about all of the rules and regulations of Animal testing. Over the course of several hours, I cranked it out and passed the course, which qualified me to be escorted down into the Animal Facility where the experimental mice are housed. I’m excited to see the mice in action! I’m not allowed to take pictures of the mice or anything, so I won’t be posting any, but I’ll keep you filled in the best I can. I haven’t been down there yet, but I think I will go soon.

Today, we isolated DNA. Rob and I put tissue samples from the six mice in tiny test tubes, and put an enzyme in each tube to digest the tissue. Then, we followed a lengthy and complex procedure that involved the centrifuge (it spins very fast to separate the components of a liquid) and lots of measuring tiny amounts of liquid with a pipette.  Rob has performed this procedure countless times, and it comes naturally to him, and he thought the process was logical and it was quite obvious to him what to do next. This fascinated me, because I thought it was difficult. He is very experienced and very smart. He expertly mixed chemicals while I awkwardly fumbled around. Normally, in the tubes, you can see a little “pellet” of DNA floating around. One of the tubes had a very very tiny pellet, and I couldn’t even see it. Rob, however, quickly spotted the tiny speck, saying that he could see things like this very easily with his “PhD eyes.” He is a very smart man and he is good at the experiments he does. I also quickly learned that lab work requires a lot of concentration, and you have to double check your work constantly. Click here to view a photo of The Lab where I did this procedure. In my next post, I’ll tell you what we do with the DNA that we isolated.

I work at the lab from 9:00am-2:00pm, so I have lots of free time. Most of the time, I run after working at the lab, which is nice and relaxing. I’m having a lot of fun so far!

That’s it for now, I’ll be back next week with an update!