Duke University | Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program

So this blog post comes a bit late but I guess its better now than never!  I've been quite busy last week and I've just got some time to reflect on what I've learned this summer.

First of all, my experiences in the Heitman lab have solidified my ambitions to pursue a research career in the medical field.  During my eight weeks in the lab, I learned a great deal about the various techniques being used in molecular biology today and by working with my wonderful mentor, Soo Chan, I found that I became more and more independent in my abilities to conduct research.  At the beginning, Soo Chan was literally writing out each step that I would have to take in order to set up a PCR reaction but by the end, I designing my own PCR reactions, using primers I made myself to amplify regions of a genome that I was interested in!  Now that's progress!

With regards to my final career path, I'm still undecided between the degrees of MD, ph.D, or both.  I think the medical school experience would be a wonderful way of "opening my eyes" to the many fields where cutting edge research is being done and I think the rigor of its curriculum would help shape my future research focus.  The only way that I'll be able to find out is to continue working in labs and exposing myself to the countless opportunities that the medical world has to offer.  I'm really glad I was able to do this program this summer and I'm learning more and more each day!

Thanks to all my readers!  Hope you enjoyed!

Good evening my fellow readers!  For this week's blog, we're supposed to write about the criteria for a good seminar.  The seminar speakers that we've had for this summer have been all very engaging and I truly enjoyed learning about the vast range of topics they covered, from lemurs to scientific writing.  Here are some of their qualities that I think made for a good seminar:

1) A good seminar speaker should be engaging and interesting. Many of them were willing to clarify questions we had during their talks and they were also able to pick out the most important parts of their research to present.

2) A good speaker should go into the right amount of depth.  For undergraduate students like us, I think that all the speakers did a good job presenting the necessary background informtion for a lay audience to understand their research. 

3) They should readily answer questions.  All of them were really good about this.

4) They should make good use of presentation tools.  The powerpoints that all of the speakers gave were very well designed and easy to follow.

Yep!  I think that's all I can think of for now.  I'll add more later and I'll post about my visions for a future career!

I thought my blog had too much text so this week, I'll update you guys with some more pictures of the fun people in the lab!

First, a picture of my workspace.

Marianna, a grad student, is hard at work reading an article.

Lukasz is working with the pipettes.

Ahh, its Keisha Findley!  She's really cool!

Our supplies, all autoclaved and ready to go.

Greetings fellow readers! I hope that everyone has been doing great. I certainly have been and the past few weeks in the lab have been action-packed and I’ve learned a great deal more. It seems that everyday, ground-breaking articles are published and the amount of reading that I’ve been doing keeps piling up! The research process has truly been amazing and I’m going a bit crazy trying to just keep up with all the developments.  Our lab has also been extremely exciting!  The great Jen Reedy, the MD-PhD student in our lab, just gave her dissertation yesterday and there was a cornucopia of celebrations in the lab.

My project in the Heitman lab revolved around the fungus Mucor, whose existence has been known for quite some time but little work has been done regarding its pathogenicity and its sexual cycle. It is a pathogenic fungus known to infect immunocompromised patients, such as those inflicted with HIV, causing a disease called mucoralsis. I will spare you the rather gruesome pictures of this infection. My project focuses in on a specific portion of the Mucor genome- that which governs its sex.

In Mucor, it has been found that there are two mating types, denoted a and α. Surrounding the gene that encodes for the mating type are two other genes. In my project, I will investigate whether this sequence of genes is conserved across the known isolets of Mucor (conservation of genes is termed synteny).

Finally, a picture of my fungus!

In other news, I’ll be heading up to NYC this weekend for a non-profit organization I’ve been involved in! It’ll be my first trip to the Big Apple and I will keep everyone posted (with pictures) about what happens!
 

Last week, I was also able to conduct an interview with the post-doc that I’m working under. Soochan Lee was born in Ulsan, Korea and he came to the US after getting his bachelors and masters degrees in genetics and molecular biology at Kyung Hee University. As a child growing up in Ulsan, Soochan enjoyed playing with his friends in the mountains and at the seashore. Soochan told me that his favorite subject was always science and knew from a very young age that he would be a scientist. Moving from Korea after obtaining his masters, he landed at Texas A & M university to work on obtaining a Ph.D. There, he studied the interactions between plants and microbes. Within four and a half years, he finished and this January, he started his work in Joe’s lab as a post-doc! He intends to continue on the path to eventually become a professor and research of fungus. Previously, he has worked on the pathogenic fungi Cryptococcus (crypto for short!) and Aspergillus and in the Heitman lab, he has continued his work with crypto and has started working on another species with me- Mucor.

Soochan, like Joe, started research early, joining a bacterial genetics lab as an undergraduate junior studying how bacteria can become resistant to heavy metals and environmental pollutants. Although he describes how research can be stressful at times, with pressure to publish in well-known journals, he says that the best way is to make sure you get plenty of rest.

Moving to the US from Korea, Soochan found that US labs are well funded and well supported and Soochan has adapted very well to the different languages and cultures in the US. In his spare time (the very little that he has!), he enjoys watching war movies and listening to punk rock! His heros are his father, Joe Heitman, and Brian Shaw (his Ph.D advisor) for the significant contributions that they’ve all made to his life.

Finally, a lab disaster anecdote that illustrates the importance of labeling! As a Ph.D candidate at Texas A&M, he worked on a fungal strain for over 6 months without finding any sensible results. As it turns out, the strain was mislabeled as something else and he essentially wasted the first half year of his Ph.D study! Label meticulously!