Duke University | Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program

I left Chapel Hill at 3 AM on Saturday, and I arrived here in Osaka, Japan Sunday evening!

On my loooong trip here, I had a lot of time to reflect on everything that happened this summer. I've had some previous research experiences, and I enjoyed all of the labs that I've been in. However, the Reya lab is the most translational, the most biomedical, lab I've ever been in. And I loved it! Although I don't personally know any leukemia patients, I never found myself at a loss as to why I was doing the research I was doing.

Oh, good news! I'm going to be continuing my work at the Reya lab as a work-study student. My hope is to become an independent study student by my junior year and continue my senior year.

By the way, my aspirations of pursuing an M.D./Ph.D. are still strong and growing. I think this summer has definitely strengthened my desire!

Oh, and guess what!? The weirdest thing happened. Guess who was on my flight from RDU to Detroit? Vinayak. Haha. What a weird coincidence, huh?

Hopefully see you guys in August!

P.S. I just want to say thank you to Dr. Reya, Bryan, and Jeff for an unforgettable summer (and thanks for welcoming me back in this upcoming school year!). And thank you Dr. Nijhout, Alex, Suzanne, and Debbie for making it all possible!!

What I've been up to the past few weeks...

The past few weeks have probably been some of the busiest and most nerve-wracking weeks of my life. I've been super busy with a lot of imaging - some nights I was in lab past midnight! On top of all of the experiments, last Monday I presented for journal club (on a Cell Stem Cell paper called "TEL-AML1 Corrupts HSCs to Persist in the Bone Marrow and Initiate Leukemia") and a few days later on Thursday I presented all of the research that I'd done in the past two months at the lab meeting. Lastly, I finally finished my poster! Here's little picture of it:

Oh, did I mention? We got a Wolfgang Puck pressure cooker for our imaging experiments! Look, it's beautiful:

I'm sad to say that I haven't been using it recently. I've found that, for various reasons, the pressure cooker doesn't work for me. Only after we got the pressure cooker did I discover that a simple microwave works the best. Oh, science, how I love thee...

Career Panel

The career panel last Wednesday was probably one of the most helpful and inspirational talks I've ever been to. Hearing about people's lives, about what steps they've taken to come to the stage that they're at right now.

I was really intrigued about the analogy that Elizabeth made about researchers and doctors, where the doctors are the waiters/waitresses and the researchers the chefs. Thinking about this idea made my desire to pursue the M.D./Ph.D. program even stronger. Similar to how there's a lot of miscommunication and misunderstandings between chefs and waiters, I think there's a huge divide between doctors and researchers. This is just my perception - I don't know if it's right - I feel like researchers spend their entire lives doing experiments and, occasionally, making great discoveries, but their efforts are wasted because the doctors might not keep up with the latest news. Doctors spend their entire lives listening to patients, observing them, and helping ease their ailments but what they know about their patients and their diseases rarely falls into the ears of the researchers. Maybe my perception of M.D./Ph.D.'s are idealistic, but what I want to do with both those degrees is to lessen that gap, to create more communication between the M.D.'s and the Ph.D's.

Another thing that amazed me was something that Elliot said. While he was describing his undergraduate research at Purdue, Elliot mentioned how every time something new came into the lab, his P.I. would tell him how it worked and how to use it. This description painted a really vivid picture in my mind. It fascinated me because there are so many things in my lab that I see every day but I don't know how it works or how to use it. Another thing that amazed me was how Elliot was able to publish a paper as a first author, how he was able to juggle schoolwork and lab work so well. That's my dream.

Anyway, I'm going to go back to my staining! Funfunfun :)

RCR

The day after we watched "And the band plays on", I was talking to my mentor Bryan about the film. I discovered that while I was of the opinion that Robert Gallo was completely in the wrong, he thought that Gallo had made amazing discoveries.

This made me think a lot. I've lived in the United States since I was 5 years old, so I've been going to school here since kindergarten. From the time we started learning about World War II in history class, I'd always been told that Japan caused unforgivable atrocities to happen at Pearl Harbor, that they had killed many an innocent citizen...and the teacher would go on to gloss over what had happened with the atomic bombs. Every summer, however, I would go to history museums and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Japan and would learn about what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki...and would learn very little about Pearl Harbor. I was always confused. Was the United States or Japan in the wrong? Which was worse - Pearl Harbor or the atomic bombs? Every time someone in America mentions Japan's role in WWII, I get flustered and find myself wanting to defend Japan. Every time someone in Japan mentions U.S.'s role, I become uncomfortable and stick up for the United States. Basically, I'm just a jumble of emotions whenever the topic comes up...

So my point is that I don't really know what's true and what's false in the AIDS situation. I may be simple-minded, but I'm just glad that everything that was discovered was discovered and that we've found out so many things since the time when we didn't know AIDS even existed.

...On to things I do know!

My research question

The Reya lab concentrates on a particular type of cancer called leukemia, which is a cancer of the blood or bone marrow. There are two types of leukemia: lymphocytic leukemia and myelogenous leukemia. Lymphocytic leukemia results in cancer in cells that normally form lymphocytes (white blood cells). Myelogenous leukemia results in cancer in cells that normally form red blood cells, some types of white blood cells, and platelets. The Reya lab concentrates on the latter - myeloid leukemia.

In the lab, we look at the basic functions of stem cells and their role in myeloid leukemia. For example, something I am working on is the mechanism of cellular division in leukemia stem cells. When a stem cell undergoes cellular division, it can divide so that it results in either (1) two stem cells or two committed cells (symmetric differentiation) or (2) it can divide so that there is one stem cell and one differentiated cell (asymmetric differentiation).

How do leukemia stem cells perform asymmetric cell division? It has been found that different proteins are distributed differently in stem cells and differentiated cells. In particular, the Numb protein is found to be distributed to the differentiated cells and the Notch protein to the undifferentiated cell.

What affect do the different types of cell division have on myeloid leukemia? That's what the overarching question is! :)

[Divide and conquer: how asymmetric division shapes cell fate in the hematopoietic system (Nature, 2008)]

Along with the looking at the presence of different proteins in symmetric and asymmetric stem cells, I am doing some imaging. For example, here is a picture of one of my H&E stained-slides!

Randomness

Today I was cranking for hours on the cryostat, and I realized what I want to do. My life goal, right now, is to go into an M.D.-Ph.D. program, specialize in hematology or osteopathology, and do research on leukemia (I love working at the Reya lab, if you haven't noticed =]). I've always been enchanted by the aspect of having both an M.D. and a Ph.D.. No, I don't think it's the "I want to have as many badges as possible" boy scouts phenomenon. It's not. As I'm doing research, I find myself getting caught up in the every day, mundane aspects. I find myself being lost in how clean my peaks are in my PCR results, how clean my sections are while using the cryostat, how much bleeding there is from the eosin stain. I know it sounds grandiose and arrogant, but really what I'm trying to do is to help leukemia patients, right? I think if I were to practice alongside of doing research, I would constantly be reminded of what my "true" purpose is. I would meet actual leukemia patients who are waiting for new treatments - new treatments that I could help in discovering or improving. I think every time I would go to the hospital, I would be renewed. It's not all about writing grants, getting papers published, new apparatuses, and collaborators. It's about the patients. The disease. Of course I would panic. But I need panic. I do well with panic.

So that's my shpeel for the day. Thanks for reading! :)

My father is an environmental science researcher at UNC-CH. My mom translates scientific papers from English to Japanese. My sister is working in a nematode aging lab at University of California at San Francisco. Basically since I was born, I've been surrounded by scientists, and I'd never once questioned my desire to become a scientist...up until a few years ago. In the middle of high school, I started wondering whether I wanted to become a scientist because I, Mai Nakamura, truly wanted to or whether it was because the world of science is the only one I'd ever known. Finding myself questioning what I had previously thought to be fundamental, I became scared.

So for the past couple of years, I've been asking everyone, left and right, how they came to know what they wanted to do, how they discovered their heart's calling. I told them how I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go into science because of my parents or because it was truly meant for me. They warned me that I should never go into something because I think that it'll make my parents happy. I thought about what they said for a while and realized that I'm scared of not becoming a scientist not because of my parents' disapproval. No, I was simply scared because a non-science world is something I've never experienced before. I'm scared because I feel like I'm searching for a light switch in a dark room I've never seen in the light before.

So I set out to test myself.

The first research experience I've ever had was with the HHMI PreCollege Program for the Biological Sciences right here at Duke University. I worked in Dr. John H. Willis' lab in evolutionary biology, and my project was on genetic and morphological comparisons of two species of monkeyflowers - the high-elevation endemic Mimulus tilingii and the widespread Mimulus guttatus. That summer, I found myself working harder than I'd ever worked before in my life, working on weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and even coming in on the weekends. It was something I'd never experienced before - it wasn't about memorization, grades, or competition. I was simply driven by pure, concentrated curiosity. My research experiences between then and now have begun slowly strengthening my self-assurance that yes, I love science.

The past week in the Reya lab has been hard. Hurdles after hurdles have been put before me. The primers that I've been using for my QRT-PCR haven't been working - I don't know whether it's the annealing temperature that I need to alter or whether it's the primers themselves that are faulty. The H&E staining of the brain section slides haven't been as clean as they should be. I ran a gel using the PCR products that had taken me all day to make but ran it too long, off the gel. The QRT-PCR program I came in to run on Saturday self-aborted...and the list goes on...

It's been hard. Sometimes I feel like going home and wallowing in my own misery (just kidding!). But even though it's the hardest it's ever been in my experience with research, at the same time, strangely, I'm finally at peace. For the first time, I'm at a plateau, I'm stuck, I'm having a "scientist's block". But in no way has this deterred me from going into lab everyday. I wake up every morning wanting to go into lab, wanting to learn something new, wanting to retry everything that I'd messed up yesterday. I feel like my love for science is finally being tested, and I'm enduring. Lab is a battlefield!

So, what is my final answer to the ultimate question: what do I expect this summer? My expectations are humble. I don't expect to cure leukemia or discover something new and innovative or have even a slight effect on the scientific community. Of course, the irrational, romantic part of me wants to do those things, and of course, I dream about becoming the Duke undergraduate who saves the world! But all I really want to do right now is to discover what I, Mai Nakamura, want to do for the rest of my life.

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! =]