Hello! My name is Reign Icasiano and I got the exciting opportunity to be a Pintern this summer! I am working in the George Lab at UCSD studying neuroscience, specifically dealing with addiction and how it affects the brain. This blog will document my full internship, start to finish, tuning into the full experience with everything in between. Thank you so much for your want to learn about science through the eyes of the youth!
Mon. June 9, Day 1-
Completion of a training module!
My first day as a Pintern was about learning the ropes and fundamentals on how to act appropriately in a lab, as well as specificities that I would need to know while working at the George Lab. I spent a lot of the morning going through training so I’d be able to actually get started to work in the lab. After completing my training, one of my mentors, Sonja Plasil, took me through all of the different lab sites we would be working in. The two main facilities I’d be residing in were what’s called the Medical Training Facility (MTF) and the wet lab in the Skaggs building. I would say the most interesting part of my day was saying hi to some of the rats we’d be working with- meaning holding the rat in my hand and letting it sit there for a little bit, but I found that they were a lot nicer than I expected! These rats are
Boardwalk strolling 🙂
normally tested with cocaine or oxycodone, the two main drugs that the lab uses. I learned that since the rats are nocturnal, they’re put under red light during the day to align with their nocturnal rhythms, and to make sure their brains function at the highest level when being tested. I’m staying in an AirBnB with 4 other Pinterns (Azari, Lana, Maiya, Shiloh) attending Scripps, all in different labs. After our first day ended, we decided to head downtown for a little adventure time, and it was great! We got to walk the harbor a bit, and even walk by the huge Midway ship. It was nice to get outside in the nice San Diego sun after a long day of clouds and humidity.
Tues. June 10, Day 2-
Tubes I had to prep for the dissection taking place next week.
After getting settled in from my first day, I definitely felt a lot more comfortable with my mentors, the other people in the lab, and even my best friends, the rats! I started off my day with my other mentor, Ms. Molly Brennan. With Ms. Molly, I had a very productive morning: prepping for the dissection taking place next week, cleaning the rat beds in the cages, and also making sure that everything for her project for tomorrow was ready and exact. After my morning with Ms. Molly, I went with Sonja to shadow a bit of her lab with an undergrad student, Max. They were in the chamber room in the MTF, experimenting with ethanol, however some of their equipment issues delayed their work. One thing I had learned from this is that science takes time. It’s very slow paced, but that’s what makes it so unique from the rest of the world. From MTF, Sonja and I migrated over to the wet lab in Skaggs where I learned how to plate brain scans. One would think that plating these tissues would be a simple job, however, I found it to be quite challenging. After a rat is dissected, it’s organs are harvested for further research. What happens to the brain is it gets cut into tiny slices by a cryostat. Today, I worked with slices cut on the coronal plane, meaning that each slice moved from the ventral side to the dorsal side of the brain (forehead side to the back of the head). To plate these sliced brain scans, you go through a procedure, first cleaning/purifying the scans making sure that they’re all separated using Phosphorus Buffer Solution (PBS) while the samples are being rocked gently by an orbital shaker. A tiny strainer is placed inside the 2×3 circular template where the PBS is filled in, and from there, you scoop the tissue, or the brain slices, and put all of them in the strainer. Then you rock the samples for 5 minutes, 3 times. This is to make sure all the tissues are separate from one another, making sure it doesn’t stick. We then scooped some of the samples into a small blue container filled with PBS, allowing the samples to float around. To be able to clearly see all the samples, we used a thin goat hair paintbrush to gently flip over, unfold, detangle, etc. the different slices. Once a few brain scans were in the PBS, my task was to plate the scans in order of how the brain would be. Although it took me at least 3 tries, I was able to accomplish my task! Even though it took a few tries, science is a slow process, but making sure that everything is as good as it can get is what will truly matter in the end.
Weds. June 11, Day 3-
This is the equipment where the rats are placed in to be injected with drugs.
Repetition is always important, not only to ensure that you know how to complete a task, but also complete said task at a high standard. I spent my day exactly how I spent it yesterday: helping Ms. Molly with tubes, cleaning out the rat boxes, and scanning rats for her genome wide association study (GWAS), and then in the afternoon practicing plating brain scans with Sonja. I definitely felt a lot better about all of the procedures I did today compared to yesterday, and felt more confident in my lab work. I really like how my mentors teach me and show me how to do these procedures, and then let me do it on my own. It has definitely helped me develop my independence and assurance in the tasks I do. After finishing my morning with Ms. Molly, I went with Elizabeth, another PhD student I’m working with, and went to what’s called a Parks meeting where all the other labs in the department get together and talk about grants, science, and just questions in general that everyone has. I got to meet Dr. Olivier George, our Principal Investigator (PI), and he’s really nice and welcoming! It honestly felt like I had known him for ages, and he seemed really excited that I’d be working in his lab. After the meeting, I was with Sonja, back in the wet lab plating brain scans. Today, I truly did the brain scans all by myself, and I was really proud of my practice plates!
Thurs. June 12, Day 4-
Opening session
Today was definitely a day for learning. Instead of going to the lab like usual, the UCSD Department of Psychiatry held their annual Lewis L. Judd Young Investigators Research Symposium. It was basically like a conference where all the different labs under the department were able to present and share what their lab was currently researching. A lot of undergrad, graduate, PhD, postdoc, etc. students had all attended and presented. The morning started off with a few speakers, all from different labs, but mostly clinical talks. It was really interesting to hear and listen to what other people in the department were doing! After the first session of speakers, the conference moved into poster presentations. These presentations ranged from eating disorders to substance abuse and everything in between. I didn’t even realize how many topics there were under the branch of “psychiatry” and it was really cool to go around and learn about
Poster session
different findings in different areas. One of my favorite posters was one about meditation. I really liked it because I never even thought about how meditating can affect your brain in a good way. When I think about the word “brain” my head automatically goes to diseases, and other negative aspects, but it’s always nice to have a little reminder that there are always positive aspects as well! After the poster session, we went into another session of speakers, and these speakers were a little more pre-clinical and focused more on animal testing. A lot of the material I’ve learned today definitely helped put my brain into different perspectives that I had never thought about, and it was interesting to look at things in a different light!
Fri. June 13, Day 5-
Reading CRF papers
The circle of life in science, especially in animal testing, is never the easiest to work with. Today was definitely more of an intense day compared to the other days this week. In the morning, I started off my day in MTF, reading papers about CRF, an acid peptide that has to do with the body’s stress response, and how it works with cocaine in the brain. CRF is still an ongoing study and not as well known compared to other studies, so it’s cool to learn the process of revelations in science. I’ve figured out that reading science papers is not an easy task. Since my background in neurology is not well developed yet, the terminology used in the papers is foreign, and I kept having to look up every other word to figure out what the paper is talking about. However, I did eventually understand the gist of what the study was about after a good 2 hours-ish and it was really interesting! After my scholarly morning, Sonja picked me up from MTF for my PPE appointment, where I’d get some safety equipment for the lab. The PPE building is in an odd spot on campus, so we had a little trek to the building, but it was nice to get out from the basement and into the sun. Today was also graduation day for the UCSD students, so we also got to see a bunch of people taking pictures in their caps and gowns, excited to start a new chapter in their lives. In my appointment, I was fitted for some lab coats as well as safety glasses, and felt like an actual scientist! Afterwards, we headed back to MTF so Sonja could run some errands. One of her errands was kind of a brutal one, as it had to do with sacrificing a rat. The passing of the rat process is required to be done in two different ways to make sure that the rat is totally gone and won’t wake up. To do this, all the rats are exposed to CO2, where they are put down to make sure their breathing has stopped and that their heart has stopped pumping blood. After that, the rat has to be decapitated as their second method of sacrifice. Sonja used a guillotine to separate it’s head from it’s body and put the remnants into a biohazard bag. Once we disposed of the bag, we went into the wet lab to apply what I’ve learned the past two days about plating into the real world. The tissue we were using was for an actual project that Sonja was working on, so I had to make sure that I was doing the whole procedure without any mistakes, and I would say that I did pretty good! Sonja did the actual brain plating while I cleaned and washed all the tissue. I also learned how to make PBS which is an important ingredient in a lot of other protocols. We then ended the day, and my first week at the George Lab was complete! To keep things easy for our living situation, the 4 other Pinterns that I’m living with and I created a dinner schedule. Today was my day to cook, and I decided to make some chicken tonkatsu! As a little reward to finishing my first week as a Pintern, I went to a dance class at Drip Creative Studio, not only to keep up with my dance training, but also to get a little work out in as well. It was a really cool class with amazing dancers, and the energy was awesome. When I got home, I found the other girls watching a movie, so we ended the night with an impromptu movie night!
Saturday, June 14, Day 6-
The girls and I spent our lovely, sunny, San Diego Saturday at Mission Beach along with our host mom, Jennie, and her two kids, Hazel and Camden. The sun was finally out after a long week of clouds, and it was nice to spend it at the beach. The beach also had this mini amusement park (Belmont Park) where we went on some rides, and it was so much fun! Afterwards, we went and got gelato, and had dinner at Chick-fil-A!
Belmont Park at Mission Beach!
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