Julia Garcia

Hello,

I hope all of you had a great summer. My name is Julia T. Garcia. I spent my summer doing research in Dr. Howard Chang Lab at Stanford University School of Medicine as part of the HHMI-EXROP/SSRP program. Since the first week in the program, I learnt different things. I was working on two different projects. My main project was on long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). Specifically, I was working on the identification of lncRNAs candiadates important for the regulation of 3D chromosome architecture, which is crucial for gene regulation. This identification was done by RNA Immunoprecipitation sequencing (RIP-seq).   The other project was focused on knocking down a protein in mouse embryonic steam cells (mESC). The project and techniques were very interesting. This was my first time in a lab with 20 people, which gave the opportunity to experience the dynamics of a bigger lab. Every week during lab meetings, I had to present the progress of my project like everybody else; this kept me top of the research.

As part of the program, we have different assignments and weekly meetings to discuss scientific research and how to do presentations. Also every week we have workshops with different guest speaker that talk about their research, research in general, professional development and graduate school.

We also did recreational activities like going scavenger hunting in San Francisco, beach day at Santa Cruz and barbeques. I had some time to visit the Golden Bridge and park and the Monterrey Bay Aquarium.  The campus was nice, the mode of transportation around campus was bikes. At the beginning, I had some troubles riding my bike, but once I learned, it was fun!!

Some of the highlights of my summer, in addition to research, were being able to meet with some faculty like Dr. Andrew Fire, the 2006 Nobel winner (together with Dr. Craig Mello) for RNA interfenrce and Dr. Snyder one of the leading scientist in personalize medicine and the director of Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine.

At the end of the summer, I gave a talk and did a poster about my research on lncRNAs as part of the program. Overall, I had a great summer!!

Thank you for Reading

Julia T. Garcia

Brian Perez

Blog #1

So it has begun! It has been a week since the program started. I am now officially researching 24/7. I am really looking forward to this summer, I really think I can a lot accomplished. I have reviewed the MARC SPUR program and I am very excited at all the events I am attending. The seminars look very informative. I think I will have a better perspective on things by the end of the summer, and with the workshops it looks like I might have a little extra work. That’s fine though, as long as I benefit from it I ok with a little extra work. 

 Now I am able to really put all my time into researching epidermal induction here in the De Robertis lab. During the last few quarters I was limited by my shifting schedule and studying for classes (of course!). However, I am now able to spend most of my time in the lab. This is great because I am now able to see all of my experiments all the way through from beginning to end.

 

This is the instrument on which I perform my art. The Injector coupled with the stereo microscope allows me to inject frog embryos with various substances!

 

     

This is my work bench where all my preparations take place. It has everything I need to conduct science!

Blog #2

It has been four weeks since the start of the program, but I have been with my lab for a little under a year. I have finally been asked to present at one our weekly lab meetings. I have presented in front of people before, yet I never really get used to the idea of talking in from of audiences. At the same time I am also preparing for my personal statement for my graduate school application and for the in class critique. I was one busy weekend! Preparing a laboratory presentation of everything I have done so far, and researching schools to write about in my statement.

I have to say that after the lab meeting was over, I felt relieved. I thought it went well, and the rest of the lab members said it was good too. I also received some constructive criticism, which I always welcome since I know it will help improve my skills as a presenter.

The workshop also went well. I received tons of feedback from Dr. Azurdia, who looked over my statement and offered valuable advice to make it a stronger statement. That week I also learned a lot about how to finance my graduate education through different funding agencies.

The frogs I work with. They are very squishy and slimy.

Injecting frog embryos with the boss, Dr. De Robertis

Blog #3

Well, it is the end of week eight of the MARC SPUR program. During the last few weeks, our PI (Eddy) has discovered what was preventing the eggs from being fertilized, something that has been preventing many lab members including myself from obtaining data. It was perfect timing because the due date for the results section was right around the corner. Since then I have been rigorously performing experiments, burning the midnight oil watching over my experiments to make sure that I obtain results.

In other news, one of our lab members got a new job where he will be the PI of his own lab! This is very exciting because I too want to follow a similar career path. Since he was leaving, we all went out to celebrate his success and departure. We debated where we wanted to eat, and we finally decided to eat at a Persian restaurant called Shamshiri Grill. The food was delicious, and the portions were enormous.

Among a plethora of experiments, this one I did for fun! It is a protein gel to do a western blot. I am testing the effectiveness of a new plasmid I injected into embryos and I am going to see if b-catenin is actually overexpressed.

 

Here we are after a fattening meal. I could berally move after that.

Shamshiri Grill. I had never tried Persian food before, and I must say that I was quite impressed. Very good.

Blog #4

It is now near the end of the MARC SPUR program, and I have just finished up the ninth week. There are no more experiments for week nine. There is a reason for this change in tradition. The De Robertis lab participates in its annual Laboratory course for the first year medical students at UCLA. This is an event that the whole lab participates in in order for the med students to have an understanding of medical embryology. My PI, Eddy De Robertis, had a few lectures where he talked about the development of human embryos. These lectures were very insightful. It felt kind of cool to be sitting in the same class full of medical students learning the same things they were.

After the lectures, our lab prepared several workshops to show the various fields of embryology to the students. These fields ranged from frogs (our labs specialty), mice, chicken, and even human embryology. I was in charge of preparing the fertilization plates for the students, as they had the opportunity to fertilize the eggs to create future tadpoles. Later I was asked by Eddy to help teach students at a different station where I instructed them how to do a transvers cut of early neurala stage from embryos so that we may see the three distinct germ lays. It was very exciting! This took place for three days, and for three days we helped those students learn.

After everything was done, we had to clean up, which is the only part that was a drag. Afterwards, Eddy took the whole lab out for lunch in appreciation for our hard work. We ate on campus at this place called Faculty Center. It seemed very nice compared to all the other places on campus. As soon as that whole thing was done, I was finally able to focus on completing my poster for the final week of the program.

He we are after a few hours of enlightening medical students the ways of embryology!

Here we have a male and female frog. Can you guess which one is male and which one is female?

This is a surprisingly good picture of a chicken embryo taken right through the eye piece of the microscope. You could actually see the heart beating at this stage. This is quite an amazing thing to behold!

 

Apparently this place isn’t easy to get into if you are an undergraduate student.