Reya-ville Adventures: Week One
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Hi!
My name is Mai Nakamura, and I am a biology major from Chapel Hill, North Carolina! (Yay tarheels!)
This summer, I will be working in Dr. Tannishtha Reya's research lab for Duke's Howard Hughes Research Fellows Program. Coming in, I was really excited - I knew a little bit about how much fun would be in store for me this summer. During the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, I (along with Nicole) participated in the PreCollege edition of Duke's Fellows program: the HHMI PreCollege Program in the Biological Sciences. I loved it so much that I came back for more! Last time, I worked in Dr. John H. Willis' lab (the one Ray is in right now) - it was the best first research experience anyone could ever ask for! I can't wait to see what my experience in the Reya lab will be like!
A little bit about the Reya lab (www.reyalab.org):
Dr. Reya's lab specializes in in-vivo and in-vitro research on stem cell self-renewal and its role in leukemia. This summer, I will be working closely with Bryan Zimdahl, a graduate student in the Reya lab! Yay! He's very patient with me even though I ask a lot of questions and follow him around everywhere.
And now, here are some pretty, pretty pictures!
This is Bryan! He's currently training for a half-marathon and is almost never without a gallon of water/gatorade in his hand.
This is the cryostat that I use to make brain and femur sections. It's rather relaxing to sit in front of this machine and grind away for hours.
This is the Wechsler-Reya lab's hood under which I stain the sections that I make (with the above cryostat) using the H&E staining method.
Already, I feel like I've learned so much - everything ranging from QRT-PCR to making sections and staining them to getting cells from bone marrow to the RNAi method! It's nice to see my pretty brown lab notebook already packed with new information! =]
