This was a bit of a hectic week as the Fourth of July fell on a Tuesday this year. Nonetheless, I still had the opportunity to continue to soak up information and experience new things!
I really enjoyed focusing on my time at Emory this week as my usual days at the ENT were disrupted with the Fourth’s festivities. This week I got to spend time with both of the undergraduate students doing their separate projects. I have really enjoyed working alongside these girls as they provide more knowledge than just the science stuff infront of us. They are also incredibly valuable resources for talking about college life and applications, etc. I have really enjoyed creating relationships with both of them.
Due to my age, I had to take a course to educate me on the regulatory standards of safety in every lab this past week. It was an EHSO course structured for all minors entering the lab for the first time to familiarize us with the various chemicals. The goal was to have us feeling confident, instead of scared, around the chemicals. After this I had to navigate my way all the way across the entire campus to the research building (may I add it was 90 degrees 80% humidity). For the rest of the day, I worked alongside Gillian who was using our kidney and aorta mixtures we made last week to western blot. This was going to show the concentrations of the specific protein in the different homogenized solutions. We set everything up to go through gel electrophoresis, and then the following day we soaked the membranes in antibody to react with the specific protein. Next we cleansed the membranes to then have pictures taken of it. This was an amazing process to watch.
With the other student, I was able to focus more closely on cells. We looked at an array of drugs and no drugs to her cultured cells. They had been staying alive with the bare minimum, making them very hungry to eat all the drug present. The non drug reviewing cells got a new amount of their base solution, which I was allowed to replace all on my own! Then we left the cells to incubate and I look forward to deciphering the results.
Although the Fourth messed with part of my internship for the week, I still learned so much and enjoyed having more time in the lab. I look forward to my final week as an intern and to see what all I can soak up in my last days in Atlanta.
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