Hi all, and Happy Independence Day!! It has truly been just another incredible week here in Boston at the Ting Wu Lab. This week, we started a new chapter of our internship. Using the knowledge that we have gained when it comes to imaging and analysis, along with many other fields of knowledge and experience, we are now going to take that knowledge and apply it to the study of telomeres! These are a special part of the DNA sequence that live on the ends of chromosomes, which help to stop fraying and unregulated replication. They are so vital to our DNA and such an interesting aspect of genetics to study! We started the week off with a chat about telomeres, and we got some images to analyze that were so nicely prepared by one of our lab mates! We then took some time to think about what we specifically wanted to analyze in the images. A very cool thing that we’re doing is getting to choose our own projects and work collectively with Fei to produce some very interesting science! Along with this, on Tuesday, we were also given a brief lecture about Chromosome Territories and their importance by our labmate Dean, who is currently weeks away from earning his PHD in the subject!! This was such an interesting topic with so much information connected to it, and it was so great to learn and talk about it with Dean. We also took a trip to our garden that day and got to harvest some of our plants! We were able to harvest some basil, jalapeños, and some of our wild strawberries (which we promptly ate).
On Wednesday, we were taken on a trip to the Museum of Science!! We went with a few of our lab mates, and it was such a wonderful experience! There were so many interesting exhibits, some of which were interactive. We got there before lunch and stayed until they closed. They had a super cool Arctic exhibit with a very cool “ice wall” that felt cold to the touch and frosted over, which was very interesting! In their Theater of Electricity, we got to watch their Tesla Coil show, it was so cool, with both some history of who Nikola Tesla was, and a very bright, very loud, but very cool demonstration of some Tesla coils! On that same floor was an exhibit on mathematics, as a self-proclaimed math nerd, this was so incredibly interesting! It featured exhibits demonstrating the history of math, some diagrams that help us to understand math, and the abundant art that math produces! We also spent a lot of time in their Perception Playground exhibit, which was a little disorienting but very cool, highlighting the many aspects of being human we often overlook. Their Hall of Human Life was also very eye-opening and incredible. They even had areas to analyze the arch of your foot, and some very enlightening exhibits on the human body and mind, which was one of my favorite exhibits! Another very cool aspect of this museum was their Live Animal Care center, in which they have a multitude of animals they are rehabilitating. We got to see many very adorable animals being helped by the employees of the museum, including our new hedgehog friend!
Thursday was our last work day of the week, as Friday was Independence Day. We began to utilize some new tools we were introduced to, to begin exploring the ideas we’ve begun to explore. This included much trial and error with coding, but an overall very exciting and successful outcome! This also involved some work with Fiji, and a very cool program that Laura helped produce! Then, of course, was the Fourth of July! Being in Boston on Independence Day was truly an incredible experience! To be in the state home to the ‘shot heard around the world’, the Boston Tea Party, and so much rich American history was truly indescribable. I spent the day down at the Charles River at the Boston Pops Firework Spectacular! A wonderful Boston tradition in which they hold a free concert for the public, followed by the spectacular firework finale! This year’s concert was conductor Keith Lockhart’s 30th year conducting the Boston Pops, as well as the start of the year-long celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary! The concert featured the U.S. Army Field Band Soldiers’ Chorus, the Boston Children’s Chorus, Boston’s R&B group Bell Biv Devoe, LeAnn Rimes, and, my personal favorite, who I am still in awe of, Leslie Odom Jr. (Aaron Burr from Broadway’s Hamilton). It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get to see all of these wonderful artists for free, no less, surrounded by so many people coming together to celebrate our country’s freedom, and see those fireworks over the Charles River to end the night!
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