Duke University | Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program

 Hello everyone! Today we had our final poster session and while it was amazing, it was also very sad. These seven weeks have given me an amazing experience and I can't believe that on Monday I won't be waking up early to get to the lab. I have to say I will miss working in the lab and seeing all the nice people in the Rausher lab.

My experience at Howard Hughes has been invaluable. I have learned so much, from pipetting to cloning. I am so grateful for all of the wonderful people who run the program and all of the people who have helped me, especially Carrie and Tanya.

This summer really opened my eyes and I'm glad I was accepted.

 The program is nearing the end and so is my research project. Its kind of amazing how quickly these seven weeks have passed by. It seemed as though the research symposium was so far off in the distance but now its coming too quickly. Our posters are due next week! I am soooo not ready but luckily our preparation has helped a lot.

Our results and conclusions paragraphs are due Tuesday but I don't have either of those so that will probably be a problem. The reason I don't have these is because along the way my projecyt hit a few road bumps. In order to continue my project I have to grow yeast colonies, but when I tried, the yeast wouldn't grow. Finally last week, my mentor found out that the plates we were using to grow the yeast on had media that was made using an incorrect protocol. So, now that that problem has been solved, things are looking up. Our yeast have grown successfully (yes!) and I'm on my way to finishing my project.

I'm going to be really sad when I finish this program. I have really enjoyed working in the lab and I have really learned a lot about genetics and the processes through which one can investigate in that field.

 Hey everyone! I'm back again this week, albeit a little late but later is better than never, right? So, this week we're supposed to blog about what happens on a typical day in our labs. In my lab, things are pretty routine. I usually come in and get straight to working with Carrie on whatever we're doing that day. We may be running gels (that's a likely possibility), or setting up PCRs (this one is likely too), or trying to grow yeast and/or bacteria (also a very common practice.) 

While we're doing these things we encounter a lot of results that we don't want, something that happens all too frequently in science and research. So we have to troubleshoot and figure out why we didn't get the desired result and how we can go about fixing our problems. As you can imagine, we redo a good portion of our experiments. But, its all part of the research experience.

There are other researchers running their experiments in my lab also, but they don't always work in the lab or the whole day. Sometimes the lab can be pretty busy with people running this way and that. Often times someone has their iPod hooked up to the stereo which adds to the mayhem. But during other days it can seem as if I am the only person in the lab. It depends on the day; the lab can be eerily quiet or pleasantly busy.

One exciting thing that happened this week was the cook out at Dr. Rausher's house. All of the people who work in the lab were invited to the cook out. It was a lot of fun getting to socialize outside of the lab. hilarious stories were told and it was an overall enjoyable  evening.

That's all I have to say today so... bye!

 Hi all! Happy Fourth of July! Well, my research project involves finding the genes in flowers that play key roles in determining flower color. I am working on isolating the correct genes in various species of flowers in a genus. From there I have to find out the sequences of the genes and replicate them in various kinds of cultures. My lab is working find the specific gene that causes flower color; I am basically working on isolating genes that could possibly be the one that causes the change.

 Hello everybody! This week I interviewed my PI, Dr. Mark Rausher, so that I could learn more about him and his background. Here is what I found out:

He grew up near PIttsburgh and in New Jersey and attended the University of Chicago (undergraduate) and Cornell.

He went into this field because he has always been interested in science and biology. He really got interested in genetics during college.

His favorite college course, although there were many, was Habitats and Organisms, an ecology course.

Some of the lessons that he has learned over his life time are to do something that really interests you, and  to balance personal life and work as healthily as possible.

His favorite musical artist is Bob Marley, his favorite cities are Mexico City and Edinburgh, and he likes to read and garden (his favorite book is Long March to Freedom by Nelson Mandela.)

Well, those were some interesting tidbits about Dr. Mark Rausher and I guess that's it!