On Monday I went to take my brother to visit my old lab, where he'll pretty be replacing me there. I've worked in that lab for the last 4-5 summers and have many fond (and some not-so-fond) memories there.
The boss of the lab took all of us (consisting of 3 undergrad students, 2 grad students, 1 post-doc, me, and him) to lunch at a local Thai place. It was pretty decent. Like many places, their "spicy" was totally not spicy. It was above mild, but not spicy. Everyone but me got mild or "no spice" (aka, bland).
So I was talking to one of the summer undergrads working there this summer, and suddenly she was like, "Are you 'Aek'?" I was like, "Umm, yeah, why? . . ." Apparently, she's working on one of the projects I was working on last year - the one on hypertension that was also a collaboration between my lab (in pharmacology) and a lab in physiology. She's been reading my notes and replicating my experiments to get more data. So she knows all about my work, haha! So far her results are consistent with mine, which is a good sign that I did things right the first time! Anyway, I was just amused that someone actually read my experimental notes and are putting them to use, rather than having them sit on the corner of a shelf collecting dust.
In my current lab, I've been doing things that makes me feel like my B.S. in Biology was actually being put to use. I've created an oligonucleotide with several sticky-end restriction sites in there, and I was good enough to even overlap some of the sites to conserve base pairs. I also re-designed 3 of my primers for PCR. Now I just need to wait for all my DNA to be shipped to me from some bio-tech company. That shouldn't take too long. I know this paragraph means little to nothing for non-biology majors and such, but the point is: it's good to know at least a portion of my undergrad knowledge is being put to use.
That's all, not a terribly exciting post.
The boss of the lab took all of us (consisting of 3 undergrad students, 2 grad students, 1 post-doc, me, and him) to lunch at a local Thai place. It was pretty decent. Like many places, their "spicy" was totally not spicy. It was above mild, but not spicy. Everyone but me got mild or "no spice" (aka, bland).
So I was talking to one of the summer undergrads working there this summer, and suddenly she was like, "Are you 'Aek'?" I was like, "Umm, yeah, why? . . ." Apparently, she's working on one of the projects I was working on last year - the one on hypertension that was also a collaboration between my lab (in pharmacology) and a lab in physiology. She's been reading my notes and replicating my experiments to get more data. So she knows all about my work, haha! So far her results are consistent with mine, which is a good sign that I did things right the first time! Anyway, I was just amused that someone actually read my experimental notes and are putting them to use, rather than having them sit on the corner of a shelf collecting dust.
In my current lab, I've been doing things that makes me feel like my B.S. in Biology was actually being put to use. I've created an oligonucleotide with several sticky-end restriction sites in there, and I was good enough to even overlap some of the sites to conserve base pairs. I also re-designed 3 of my primers for PCR. Now I just need to wait for all my DNA to be shipped to me from some bio-tech company. That shouldn't take too long. I know this paragraph means little to nothing for non-biology majors and such, but the point is: it's good to know at least a portion of my undergrad knowledge is being put to use.
That's all, not a terribly exciting post.
1 comment:
LOL, people ask me what I do in my research... I tell them I cut and paste DNA!
-OE
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