26 Jul Eleanor Rosen, Briney Lab TSRI- Week 5

This marks my last blog, and my last week in the lab. I’m so grateful for this opportunity, and will never forget those who made it possible for me to spend this time in the lab. It’s been an incredible 5 weeks in the briney lab, i got to meet so many amazing people, and do so much cool science. This week we checked the binding of our antibodies, worked a lot with Dani and her proteins, and spent time with our lab.

Monday, July 20,

Monday i learned i have no experience in excel spreadsheets, but we learn something new every day, and i figured it out. We had to create a spreadsheet for Nathan so we could organize our antibodies and their concentrations. We spent the morning working on a presentation for the lab, and the afternoon doing our first work with our Lassa antibodies. We had to create solutions with the antibodies, because we were testing them in a BLI machine, which measures the antibody, and its ability to stick. We did a lot of pipetting because each one needed a different amount of antibody and buffer. This then got loaded into the machine, where it dipped in the buffer first, then measured the antibody, then measured its ability to stick, and did that for each one. The whole machine process took about 45 minutes, and it was cool to see that our work paid off. Almost all of them worked, some really well, some we didn’t buffer well, and some didn’t work. But we are the first people to ever get to work with these antibodies, so it was awesome to test them, we plan on spending the rest of the week looking at them in other ways, and doing data analysis on them. After work we spent the evening at home and began to deep clean the house before we left on Saturday.

BLI results

Tuesday, July 21,

Tuesday we spent with Dani, where we prepped for 23 mini preps, so we had to transfer 4ml of media and cells into a conical and centrifuged form to form a pellet. Then it was the normal preps again, adding P1, P2, P3, the centrefuging. The real issue came from the vacuuming, im not kidding when i say i was staring at it for two hours, some of them went through in a matter of minutes, while others took hours, finally we decided that it was taking too long and we switched to the centrifugation protocol, which went a lot faster. We then headed home, and took our last boba walk of our time in san diego. 

Vacume stage of Mini preps

Wednesday, July 22,

Wednesday morning we shadowed dani, where we did a gibson assembly, so we added the master mix, then the heavy and light chains and the DNA, this was then put in a thermocycler. Dani then told us the trajectory of her project and it was really cool to hear about. Although Umair tried to get Dani to tell us how to create a virus in the lab (and failed). We then watched Nate set up the BLI. We were invited to get lunch with a bunch of members of the lab so we went to one of the places on campus, and got to talk to people we don’t really talk to in the lab. After lunch we got to go to the scope and did the same process as normal to set up the grids. We got to finally see the antibodies we have spent the past 2.5 weeks working on, and it was really cool. We got to be the first people to ever see them, and to know we were the ones who worked on them was awesome. Nathan had a meeting to go to so we went to find the library with Umair. Then headed back to the lab. After work we went to the book store, and dessert shop, then headed home for the night.

Grids for the scope

Thursday, July 23,

Thursday morning we did a few nano drop samples for Nate, then we headed to the conference room to present for our mentors and a few other people in the lab. I would say the presentation went well, they told us what to add for our final one, they also told us that our work with the 38 antibodies was worth 28,000$ so we saved the lab a lot of money. We then helped Nathan set up a filter for some proteins because the ones we used for our sample on the scope were deteriorated, so we had to make new ones. We also cleaned up our bench area, and returned the random diseases that had been sitting there to their owners. Afterwards we took lab photos of the normal lab and the interns. We then Nano dropped a bunch of proteins for Dani, and finished off our day learning the math equations to create dilution for the BLI on a spreadsheet.

picture from picnic on Friday

Friday, July 24,

Friday before work we went on a morning walk to the beach, then headed to the lab, where we very proudly showed Nathan a photo shopped artwork with us, umair, and Nathan all on ducks, since we were called his ducklings. He immediately taped it to his desk. We then watched Nathan clean the protein for the scope and add the antibody to it. After that was set up we headed over to the Ward lab and the scope, where Nathan helped someone use a different scope to look at HIV, and showed us that on the scope. Then we watched our last plates get prepped for the scope, and while that was happening we got to meet one of the people who have the patent for the COVID vaccine, because she was the person who first saw it. That was really cool, but Nathan was laughing at our shock and appreciation for her, he said she was a normal person and we walk past them every day. Essentially what we were doing on the scope was the same thing she had done, just we were looking at lassa and her at Covid. We then went to the scope where we saw one antigen but the images hadn’t been processed yet. Nathan also told us that the work we had done the past weeks was almost equivalent to a full PHD project at a lower grad school. We then headed to a picnic at the glider port with a bunch of members of our lab, and we talked about our plans for college and their advice. After getting back from the lab we helped Dani set up a plate for the BLI, which is so tedious, as there are 96 wells and every single one gets a different amount of buffer and protein. So you are changing pippette tips and sizes 192 times. Finally we said goodbye to everyone in the lab, which was really sad, but they told us we were welcome back at any time, and to reach out if we needed anything. Dani then showed us her live virus she’s going to start working with, which was a great way to end the internship. We then took the trolley home, and got tacos and coco bombs to end our time in San Diego. 

BLI results from Dani

I would like to take the time at the end of this to express my gratitude to everyone who made this possible. I am so incredibly thankful that I was given the opportunity to work in the Britney lab and do so much science that I never could have done without this opportunity. 

Thank you to the entire Pinhead institute for having the Pinternship program. 

Thank you to Sarah Holbrooke for accepting me into the program and giving me this opportunity. 

Thank you to Bryan Briney for allowing me to be an intern in his lab. 

Thank you to Nathan Lienso, Dani Marineli, and Jonathan Hurtado, for being incredible mentors and sharing their projects with me. 

Thank you to Terrance Mesemer for being a great lab manager and always being there if we needed anything. 

Thank you to my fellow interns in the briney lab, Belle Mctigue, and Liliana Almenza Mendez, and Mohammed Umair. 

Thank you to Jennie Thomas for being an amazing host mom and putting up with us all summer. And thank you to Goose and Patillas.  

Thank you to my family for allowing me to leave them for five weeks to do this.

Thank you to the other Pinterns in San Diego for making the summer amazing, Zoe Schiffer, Kaila Rebolledo Unda, Stella Coe, Belle Mctigue, and Liliana Almenza Mendez.