Welcome back to my blog! Just a reminder, I am coming to the close of my fifth week at the Ting Wu Genetics Lab at Harvard Medical School! This week has been so great; we continued our research on telomeres and their positions in the nucleus. To do this, as the Ting Wu lab specializes in imaging, we are using data in two channels, in which the nucleus has been stained, and another in which the telomeres have been stained. These were imaged in 3D, which allows us to perform a lot of interesting and helpful analyses. Because we had the images already prepared, I did a lot of coding this week. At the beginning of this intership, coding was pretty daunting as I’d never done any coding before, but as I’ve been in the lab and been able to use coding to do some really amazing things, I’ve started to enjoy it and all it can help me do in bioimage analysis. I’ve been using Python in VS Code, and GitHub Education has been very helpful in sharing our code with each other and building upon what others are doing. In the long run, I hope to be able to build a 3D model of our nuclei and the telomeres inside, as well as to gather some other measurements and qualitative data. This does present some challenges, but it has been helpful to also be exposed to some programs that can help with this, some specifically designed for biologists and their data. I’ve had a lot of breakthroughs in my code, including using and editing macros in Fiji to help me batch-process my images to make segmented nuclei masks, as well as to batch-process all my images in order to localize all my telomeres and save a 3D roi to correspond with my nuclei images. This helped me get good data for my measurements and set up my ability to start filtering my localizations to each nucleus in 3D. Creating all of this code to work and be filtered in a way that is organized took up the majority of the beginning of the week. On Tuesday, we were also given a presentation on how nuclei move and interact with each other. On Wednesday, though, we took a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston!
This was such an amazing experience! Boston truly has just so much to offer, and it’s so amazing to just get to experience it with some really great people. I’d never been to an art museum before, and what a location to start! The MFA is so large and full of so much rich history, and truly, artworks that left me in awe. There were many exhibits, and I think we did pretty good at hitting as many as we could while the museum was open. There was such a wide range of artworks, from old instruments, to Art of the Americas, Art of Ancient Egypt, Art of Greece and Rome, Asia, and so many more amazing wings and exhibits. I love art, but I don’t have much artistic ability, so seeing such wonderful art connecting so many types of people, cultures, and time periods is really something to behold. I loved the ancient Egyptian Art, and to see even some historic connections to us currently back in Ancient Egypt was truly moving. I could go on and on about the MFA, but just trust me that it was beautiful, and I’ll get back to the science!
Thursday morning, we started with a lecture from Fei about Super-Resolution Microscopy! A method that, post-development, won a Nobel prize for its ability to help image subjects that are too small to image due to the diffraction limit. To break past the diffraction limit like this, and all that it entailed, was truly revolutionary in the realm of microscopy and imaging. Fei has personally used two super-res microscopy techniques, so she focused on the two she’s used, but the other super-res imaging techniques, she has learned about and taught very well and clearly! Truly, it is such an interesting and useful subject! We then continued to work on our code and individual projects until Ankith gave us a follow-up talk later in the day about some more aspects and techniques he has personally used as well. Though a little chaotic (as can be seen in the featured image), it was so fascinating, super-res microscopy is such an innovative field, and so useful and interesting. It uses chemical, genetic, and different hardware to maximize microscopy ability. On Friday, we met with Fei and worked on some code together, as well as met to see where we were all at, and how we could collaborate and help each other with issues we were running into. I made some breakthroughs in my code, and I’m so excited about what I’ll have when I finish this analysis. On Saturday, I went up to Salem, Massachusetts!! This was such a cool area and very close to Boston. Besides the inflated, though fun, ‘magic’ surrounding Salem, to visit this town and look at some of the historic sites where such horrible things happened in American History was truly intriguing and eye-opening. It was such a beautiful town with lots of roots and people that shaped a big part of America’s history in many ways!
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