Hello World
Hello, world. =] My name is Dovina and I am a rising sophomore at Duke majoring in Biomedical Engineering. This summer is actually my first lab-research experience; super exciting! I am working at the Kirby Lab (http://kirbylab.mc.duke.edu/) in the Neonatal Pediatrics department of Duke Medical, where we study cardiac neural crest cells and heart development. The research put out by the Kirby lab holds a lot of promise in terms of medical application since congenital heart defects involving septation of the heart is an unfortunately common birth defect. My mentor, grad student Martha Alonzo, is especially interested in mapping the neural crest cells involved in heart development in zebrafish. The neural crest cells form a group of cells located between the neural tube and epidermis of the vertebrate embryo. They migrate to form components of the nervous system, cartilage-producing cells, smooth muscle, as well as components of several organs. Through existing research we already have a good idea of which neural crest cells migrate to form parts of the heart in mice and chicks, but the cardiac neural crest cells and their patterning of the heart in zebrafish remain a fairly unchartered territory.
I’ve spent this past week learning the basic skills required in our lab, such as how to set up the zebrafish for breeding, embryo injections, and imaging specimens. It’s been really educational and engaging. I’ve also spent a lot of time reading papers and getting up to speed on the existing research on zebrafish and neural crest cells. It’s been tiring at times; my lab time schedule can get a bit crazy some days since there are nights when I’ve had to how much I’ve learned in just the past five days! All the members of the Kirby Lab have been so awesome and nice, making me feel welcome and giving me so much help
I’ll leave you with a few pictures of our lab…
This is our office...
This is Martha's benchspace in the main lab area, which I use too...
And this is the fish room, where we keep all the zebrafish for breeding
Until next week, peace out =]
