Hey MARC-ers!
For those
of you who don’t know me, my name is Alyson Ramirez. I’m a fifth-year
Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology major at UCLA with a minor in
Biomedical Research and I’m currently a MARC Trainee. (Yea, a fifth year. It
takes some of us a little more time to finish all of our classes). I’m
currently a student in the Exceptional Research Opportunities Program run by
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and I’m doing my summer research in the
lab of Dr. Leonard Zon, who works on hematopoiesis and cancer in the zebrafish.
Which means I get to play in Cambridge at Harvard University all summer long! I’ve
been at the on-campus lab, located in the super nice and newly renovated
Sherman-Fairchild building for about two weeks now, and I am having ridiculous
amounts of fun. My project this summer is to perform a small chemical screen in
zebrafish embryos to try and identify chemicals that can cause the halt of the
development of melanocytes, the cells that undergo oncogenic transformation to
become melanoma (skin cancer!) Other studies have shown that malignant
melanocytes express genes found in their progenitors, neural crest cells, and
my project is to see if any chemicals in our library can downregulate or
abolish neural crest gene expression. So far I’ve set up my first chemical
screen, made two different probes for identifying neural crest markers, crossed
lines of wild type fish, collected/cleaned/sorted embryos, and am going to
start my first in situ hybridization
next week. It’s been busy! In addition to running around lab, we’ve also had a
ton of meetings- because the Zon lab is so huge, we have a lot of joint
meetings with other labs as well as regular lab meetings at the Cambridge lab,
and then other lab meetings with the lab based at Children’s hospital. And that
doesn’t even include seminars for my summer program. Meetings on meetings on
meetings, but all of the presentations are really interesting and it’s so cool
to see so many different projects stem from a few basic questions. Everyone who
works here is really outgoing and humble about their work, so it’s a very cool
environment to be in.
I’ve also
done a fair amount of stuff outside of the lab since I’ve been here. Between
the thunderstorms (gotta love east coast weather), I’ve been romping around the
city. My first weekend, we followed the Freedom Trail, which was such a cool
way to see a lot of Boston. We got cannoli from the North End, beer from the
first tavern in the US, and lots of delicious fruit from the best farmer’s
market I’ve been to. Five nectarines for a dollar? Yes please! On Sunday, we
went kayaking- it was really cool to be on the water that I see from my window
every morning, and the views of the city were awesome. Although the sunburn
after was not so awesome. This past weekend was pretty adventurous too! I did
the Warrior Dash, a three-mile mud run/obstacle course that really lived up to
its name. Three of my friends from my program and I drove about 1.5 hours to
the boonies of MA to slug through mud, jump over fire, haul ourselves over wooden
walls, and earn the warrior title. I’m still finding mud in places I didn’t
know it could stick, and I’ve got some pretty nice bruises. I’ve also had a ton
of fun exploring Cambridge- there’s so many new restaurants here to try, and I
spent a good hour or two reading next to the river yesterday, which was a nice
way to pretend that the weekend wasn’t ending. Although I’m having so much fun
in lab that the week feels just like an extended weekend. It’s safe to say I’m
having the best summer ever!
Until next time,
Alyson
The view from my room!
Kayaking the Charles
The
view from outside my window in lab. Everyday.
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