Esme Montes Summer 2016 Blog 1

Hi! My name is Esme Montes and I am an incoming senior at UCLA in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology. This summer I was accepted into the CARE SEM SPUR summer program to conduct research in a lab. So far, I have learned so much in these short two weeks that I have been attending the program seminars. We have had a couple of guest speakers come and present to us some information about their experiences in graduate school and what their journeys have been like. Hearing them speak has just encouraged me so much more to pursue my PhD career. The program has also brought in people that are in the acceptance committee at UCLA’s programs and shared what they are looking for in incoming students and how much work it really takes. This also made me realize what it took to become a good candidate and has made me hungry to succeed and pushed me to focus on my end goals. I also have met so many amazing and intelligent people from around the world and have learned so much from them.  I cannot wait to see what the remaining weeks hold for me and how much more I will learn.

 

A picture of the Inverted Fountain at UCLA. I get to see this beautiful fountain everyday!

 

This past weekend I decided to explore LA for a bit and ended up at the Getty.

Eddie Polanco Summer 2016 Blog 1

This summer I had the opportunity to visit the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, in order to gain new research experiences outside my normal field of study. My normal research in Dr. Zangle’s lab at UCLA involves studying the mechanical properties of cells, but this summer I will be learning biochemical techniques in the context of protein engineering and characterization.

This was my first week of research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and already the experience is so different from anything I could have expected. one of the really surprising things to me is that pipette tips are not considered sharps (even the serological pipettes, which was shocking to me). It has been a good experience so far; this is my first time working in a biochemistry lab. We use a technique in the lab called phage display to create novel proteins through directed evolution. By inducing mutations in e. coli, and repackaging the DNA into phage particles, we are able to then select for the phage expressing our protein of interest. By repeating this process over and over, we can continue to select for phage with increased binding affinity to our protein of interest. The first week went well, but I am still getting the hang of the laboratory techniques used in the lab, bacterial cell culture, and phage selection.

The first weekend I decided that since I am in New York for the summer I should try to make the most of this opportunity. As such I decided to take the train down to Princeton University in New Jersey, and went for a walk around the campus. It was really fun and while I was there I had an opportunity to have dinner with my cousin Sarah who I had not seen in years. Overall it was a good weekend and a good first week in New York.

 

 

Picture Captions:

 

Picture 1: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, located in the Bronx.

 

Picture 2: Automatic sonicator for lysing cells and fragmenting DNA. We use this instead of detergent so that DNA does not gunk up our mixture, and because the protein we are interested in isolating from the e. coli needs to be released from occlusion bodies in the cell.

 

Picture 3: So my normal cell culture experience involves using a biosafety hood and extremely sanitary conditions. This is my first time doing cell culture on a bench top using a flame to maintain sanitary conditions.

 

Picture 4: This is the first time I have ever had to run a gel (in this case a western blot). It is so much harder to do than LS3 prepared me for. Interpreting the data is relatively straightforward but not breaking the gel is an art form.

 

Picture 5: View crossing over the Harlem River from the Bronx into Manhattan.

 

Picture 6: Whitman College of Princeton University. Princeton was really beautiful and I really enjoyed spending the day there. The mixed architecture (has elements from the Gothic and Romanesque periods as well as a few others) is awesome as well, and so much different the Romanesque architecture at UCLA.

 

Picture 7: This is a walkway at Princeton just behind Whitman College. The university is so beautiful, it is hard not to just post all my pictures that I took (although I posted them on facebook so if you are interested you can see them all there).

 

So far this has been an awesome experience and I can’t wait to start again this week!