28 Jun Liliana Almanza Mendez-Scripps Research @ Briney Lab, Week 1

Heyyy! It’s Liliana, and this summer I’ll be doing a five-week internship at Scripps Research in the Briney Lab. Tag alongside me, and together we can learn immunology and how to navigate around San Diego.

I’m going to format my weekly blogs day by day…

Friday , June 19th

My journey started at the Grand Junction Airport, where I took an extremely crowded plane. I’ve never been so overstimulated—it was so hot, humid, and noisy. Luckily for me, it was only about a 45-minute plane ride to Denver, where I then caught my flight to San Diego (this plane was so much nicer). Once I landed, I texted Jennie, our host mom. We then drove over to the house, which was only about a 20-minute drive. Once we arrived, I met Stella, Kalia, Zoey, Patillas (the dog), and Goose (the cat).

I ended up unpacking my stuff and settling in before we headed out to do a quick Walmart, Target, and Trader Joe’s run. This was the day I discovered I would never give up sweets. Yes, I’m talking about the meringues from Trader Joe’s—they are sooo good!! Once we were all done shopping, we headed to Chick-fil-A (a.k.a. dinner).

Saturday, June 20th

Belle and Ellie arrived, which meant we had a full house! We headed to Costco and Von’s to go grocery shopping. Boy, was I not ready for the mounds of people at Costco. We ended up filling two carts full of groceries just at Costco! This is also where Jennie got Patillas a chew toy that was shaped like a goose. He is so cute—he carries it everywhere now.

Later that evening, I went on a short walk just to explore the neighborhood. Once again, I underestimated it. I don’t think I’ll ever go through every single street. There are so many, although I have no complaints because they are all so unique.

Sunday, June 21st

I went to Mass around 12:30, which was really nice. Once Mass was over, I walked over to the Hillcrest Farmers Market, where the others were. Jennie had been talking about a really good mango sticky rice she gets, so I went ahead and tried it. It was so good! Hopefully, I can stop by next Sunday and buy some more.

After the farmers market, we went to Target, which was fun. It was the first time I had seen a two-story Target with a cart escalator, which I was extremely fascinated by for some reason.

We headed home, and since it was my turn to make dinner, I decided to make spicy chicken hamburgers, which everyone approved of, so I’d say my first dinner was a success. Afterwards, we went to the beach. Let’s just say we spent more time parking than actually being in the water. Still, we all attempted to boogie board, which was a first for me but also exciting.

Monday, June 22nd

Orientation began around 10 a.m., but we had to drop off Zoey at 9 a.m., so Jennie, Ellie, Belle, and I went on a short hike to a beach lookout spot and then took a mini scenic drive.

We checked in at HR, where we began the onboarding process. I had to set up my Scripps email, and then we learned about all the servers we would have access to. Once the tech representative was done talking to all of us, we got a tour of the campus, which was pretty nice. Conveniently, Zoey, Belle, and I are literally just a parking lot away from Zoey’s lab, which makes Jennie’s job of dropping us off and picking us up very convenient.

Once orientation ended, we headed to the Briney Lab, where Terrance showed us our desks and pointed out the safety videos we had to complete before we could begin wet lab work. This took up the whole day, and right before we left, Terrance gave us a lab tour, which was so awesome. Seeing everything just got me that much more excited to start doing lab work.

Tuesday, June 23rd

Yay! It’s my birthday I’m 17 and yet I still don’t feel older, I’m sure it’ll click in eventually. Nathan one of our mentors took us to different part of the campus, he needed to take pictures of a virus he was studying. The electron microscopic that Nathan used to take pictures was worth 8 million dollars!  My mind was so blown away, but basically the microscopic takes thousands of pictures at a very zoomed up level this way the user can see if the antigens bind and specifically where. Once we got the pictures we headed back to the lab and on our way out we walked passed a man who has a patent on a Covid -19 virus! Jonathan and Terrance both talked us through what the Briney lab does in a vague manner, this was so we understood the basics before we go deeper into the concepts, which I thought was a wonderful idea. At the Briny lab employees study viruses and how and where antigens bind specifically. This is the study part of developing a vaccine, if successful they can send over the information for further varification and if all looks good it goes to trails. 

     Now adding a little depth… the lab focuses on the adaptive immune system, which is slower to respond to foreign bacteria or virus, its also highly specific to each antigen, only the right one can bind to it (unless mutations occur), and lastly key players in adaptive immune system are B-cells and T-cells. Although the lab focuses highly on B-cells  the reason being that B-cells can recognize foreign antigens very well. The lab also does tons of cloning using E.coli. But why E.coli you ask? Well E.coli can double very quickly in a simple growth medium and its easily transformed with foreign DNA and best of all its cheap and safe. After work I went to adoration at a Catholic Church a couple minutes away from where we live. When I got home I was surprised with
a decorated kitchen in company with a brownie cake and a super cute pink weighted axoloto which I’m still in the process of naming. So shoutout to Ellie, Belle, Kalia, Zoey and Stella.

Wednesday, June 24th

Day there, Jonathan sent us some pipette etiquette videos which were extremely helpful considering I hadn’t used one since freshman year. After lunch Terrance began preparing our work benches (desk inside the lab). We also got our lab coats which literally felt like an honor. Jonathan gave us some measurements we had to take using pipettes with our highly dangers solution (orange stain and water). We then weighed our liquid measurements to see how accurate we were with the pipettes. After we were done we got introduced to Benjamin’s project on Hantavirus. Benjamin is a guy who works in the lab but is currently in Sweden, he needs us to create primers on all 21 sequences. A primer is used to amplify a specific piece of DNA sequence in a specific region in the plasmid vector. Jonathan got us started on the first sequence and we were instructed to create a primer on a website called Geneious. Although this is were its difficult because the primers have to include pieces of the overhang sequence and of the new sequence and yet fit specific guideline. In this primer the guideline are to be 18-25 bp length, have a Tempurture of 55-60° and Gc content of 40-60%. I ended up created both primers for the first sequence these were my finding…  At 1:30pm Sean a 3rd year grad student in the lab did a presentation  on his current studies, which was all super cool. After Sean was done presenting we went around the room and everyone shared their current projects and a little about themselves, it was really nice to get to know everyone in the lab. After work we walked over to Stellas car which was about a 15 minute walk., which was not bad at all because we were basically touring UCSD campus.

Thursday, June 25th

Today was a pretty slow day in the lab so it’s going to be extremely short. We finished making our primers and double checked if they fit the guidelines. After lunch Nathan walked us through how to make buffers which was actually quite simple. It’s just pouring liquids into a bigger sized bottle and adding chemicals in powder form, although one does have to be be pretty accurate so you don’t mess up other people experiment which was kinda stressful to think about. One of the buffers we made should last the lab about a year considering we made a very high concentration of it. It was funny because Nathan mentioned he hasn’t done it in a while rice he says his very lucky to have technicians who do it for him so he really had to recall his chemistry and mole conversions skills. Once we were done he showed us what we would be doing tomorrow and the media culture fridge which smelled like broth it was so bad, but Nathan said you would get used it. I mean you have to trust him if the smell no longer stings his nose.

Friday, June 26th

Wow crazy today marked week one of my internship, time actually flew by! 

We started by watching videos on how extract DNA using mini kit preps. Riza was so kind to prepare the E.Coli media for us last night which allowed us to skip a couple steps.  We started by adding R1 red, R2 blue this allowed for the DNA to burst out of the cells. Once the DNA was out of cells we added R3 yellow  so a yellow precipitate would form this is all the extra cell debris junk, the DNA was in the liquid we centrifuged for a minute at 1000g’s. Once all the liquid was at the bottom of the centrifuge tube we vacuumed it using there washes of ethanol to make sure no buffer was left on the DNA. Using the vacuum was so much fun considering it was the first  I used it . Once we had our DNA we heading over to a machine that could read its concentration which mine was 65.2 ng/micro liter. 

Once finished with the mini prep Nathan invited us to do a maxi prep so we paired up me and Ellie worked together and Belle and Umair, Nathans other intern worked together. Each group had a different bacteria. A maxi prep is doing the same thing as a mini prep but in bigger proportions so measurements changed and certain steps. Ellie and I accidentally bursted one of the filters so we had to do it again which was not bad at all. Nathan said we got pretty high concentrations which gave him a lot to work with, so yay! 

To end the day Johnathan went over what transfusions were using slides to explain what we would be doing next Monday. We got a little side tracked and got on the topic of the slang word ‘cooked’ and explaining the meaning to Jonathan and Terrance, that’s when are agreement toke place of. Jonathan and Terrance would teach us immunology and we would explain words or phrases (I’d say we made a pretty good deal). Lastly, Jonathan went hands on to show us a transfusion which was interesting to look at but seems quite difficult but I did learn some tips and pointers so we could try next Monday.

After work we went to go see Toy Story 5, I extremely recommend to go watch it. its so good!

Saturday, June 27th

Today was a calm Saturday we took the blue line trolly to Little Italys Farmers Market which was only about a 15 minute ride. Jenny took me and Stella to see a really beautiful Catholic Church by the farmers market. I surprisngly only got a coconut ice cream Sunday and a brownie which were both extremely delicious. Afterwards we went to walk at the pier by Embarcadero which was also very cool to see.

Thats a wrap so stay tuned for next weeks world of adventures!!!