Duke University | Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program

I got back from lab today at 8PM. 8PM... and I started at 9AM. There have been very few times in my life that I have come home as exhausted as I have some of the days in these past two weeks. Now granted, I've never really had a job before. Still, this whole research thing isn't easy, and I didn't really expect it to be.

Part of me (the workaholic part) feels great coming home too tired to move and feeling like I really put in a day of hard work. But there's another part of me that keeps questioning why I'm doing this. To be honest, I don't really like pipetting and running gels in a lab all day. It's really cool to learn new techniques and try them once or twice, but they get old and tedious. I'm still not positive if research is what I want to do for the rest of my life, and there are days in lab that make me very hesitant to pursue it.

But then I talk to my P.I. She makes no effort to convince me that research can be a great career; she doesn't have to. Whenever she talks about our projects, her eyes light up. It's so refreshing. She sat with me today for a good hour helping me troubleshoot and discussing what directions we could take my project from here. As I talked to her, just barely keeping up with the conversation, I felt this sense of nerdy exhilaration that I haven't felt in a long time and that I've never been afraid to admit. It's something I can only describe as that unique feeling in your mind when it's trying to figure something out. When it's encountering something that it hasn't quite dealt with before, but has just barely enough capacity and resources to handle.

I know I have a very romantic idea of research. Like many people, it's really the concepts that interest me. How a protein folds correctly- so cool. Trying to figure out if a protein you just expressed is folded correctly- annoying. I get impatient. And not really because things don't work right. Sometimes troubleshooting is a blast. But I get impatient to move on, get one step closer to the answer, learn just a little bit more than I knew before. I want to get the stuff that people already know how to do over with (digestions, expressions, gels, etc.), I want to stop feeling like I'm just going through the motions, and I want to get to that part that makes research so appealing (and terrifying), to that part of innovation, that part of going somewhere that no one has gone before and being the first one to see where it takes you.

My P.I. knows the techniques better than anyone else. She had to learn all that stuff before she could pretty much just work with the concepts like she does now. I see it as kind of paying your dues. Research is dealing with something that's always new, which makes it very challenging. But I don't think it's that challenge I'm afraid of. I figure if I can get to the point where I need to face it, I'll be able to. It's those dues that I'm not sure I'll be able to handle. But hey, I've to try right?

Adios for now!

One of the things we are supposed to blog about this week is what our research question is. I pretty much said it in my first post, but just to reiterate: I'm trying to get a better idea of the protein-protein interactions of RIM, a presynaptic active zone protein in the brain that has been implicated in some disorders. I'd tell you more, but I'd have to kill you ;)

Our other blog topic is responsible conduct in research. We watched a movie on the subject, And The Band Played On, and read two articles about a paper that has been retracted. After getting some experience in a lab, a few things kept coming to mind as I read these articles. One was how many people can and often have to be involved when some sort of misconduct occurs in research. Research isn't just one scientist (either crazy or fame-seeking, of course), working in a lab all day trying to cure the world's diseases alone. Everyone has someone they are accountable to, even the PI. As I read the papers, I began to think that it's pretty tough for just one person to conduct some sort of unethical act in this kind of field. I thought of what had to be done for something like this to happen, and pictured a small group of senior lab members whispering about how great their work would look if they just took this image from another experiment, flipped it around, and used it for their purposes.

However, I wondered to myself how a discussion like that could even begin. "Hey, Jim, want to compromise your professional integrity and potentially your career on doctoring some results that will make us look really good... until someone tries to use them and figures out we lied?"  "yeah Bob, that sounds like a great idea!"

It just doesn't add up. I feel like they'd know better. Then I thought about how clueless I am in lab. I thought about how many mistakes I made, and how many more I would have made if Zac, with his infinite wisdom, weren't there to correct me or lead me back on the right track. With improper supervision, I can see how big mistakes can happen. Perhaps even some malicious ones. Nonetheless, I can't convince myself that this accounts for all of the misconduct. I must be missing something.

Anyway, our other assignment was to find an article that has been retracted recently. Here's a link to a New York Times article about the retraction of a neuroscience paper written by a Nobel prize winner that I thought was pretty interesting:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/science/07retractw.html?_r=1

Adios!

Hello again to all my dedicated readers and adoring fans. ;)

So what exactly do I want to get out of this program? I think most of my reasons are pretty standard and will be shared by the other Fellows. I want to learn lab techniques. And I mean really learn them. I've known what PCR is for years, and gel electrophoresis and how to sequence DNA and all about plasmids. But this was only a conceptual understanding. I feel like i can't really know until I've had some hands on practice. It's the little things, the little details, like what sort of equipment to use when and why or what the best conditions are to run a certain reaction and how to manipulate those, that I need to work on most.

I also want to understand how a lab functions. This is the first lab I've ever worked in legitimately (I actually started getting familiar with my lab last semester), not counting the cute little summer things I did in high school. It was all new to me. There's a lot to say for lab etiquette, and even more about how people with very different amounts of training and education can come together in one lab and not just function, but actually contribute.

One thing that may or may not make me slightly different from some of the others in the program is that I'm actually considering going into research professionally. Thus this is a very important experience for me because it will have an influence on what I go on to do with my career. Already I've begun to get an idea of what part of research I like, what part of research I don't like, and what I want (or rather, don't want) to do in a lab. I suppose in my mind I always knew I wanted to be a PI, though I'd never actually heard of a PI until I started working in her (Dr. Nicole Calakos) lab. So one of the main things I want from this experience is a better understanding of Nicole's job to see if I want to consider doing the same thing or something similar.

Here's a picture of Dr. Calakos:

    We have a website if you ever want to check it out: http://www.neuro.duke.edu/CTN/faculty/calakos/

(you totally should, my picture's on there and everything!)

That's all I have for today, so until next week, adios!

 Hello everyone! My name is Maheen Shermohammed and I am a 2009 Howard Hughes Research Fellow. I'll be using this blog to catalogue my experiences working in my lab for the next two months. I'll try to update it as regularly as I can, though I doubt anyone outside of this program (and my parents!) are reading this ;)

Well I'll just start out with an overview of what I'm doing. I work in Dr. Nicole Calakos's lab in the Bryan Research Building. This is a neurobiology lab, and one of its key areas of study is the molecular mechanism behind presynaptic methods of synaptic plasticity. I know... it's a mouthful. Synaptic plasticity is the ability of neural connections to strengthen or weaken based on the environment and how often they are stimulated. This is pretty awesome because it's currently a popular model for the mechanisms behind learning and memory.

There is a family of synaptic proteins known as RIMs that seem to be implicated in the molecular mechanisms of plasticity. I am working with a form of one of these proteins and a mutation in it.

That's all the technical stuff- time for pretty pictures! These are just some pictures of me and my lab. While Dr. Calakos is my mentor for the program, she is a PI and thus only works with me on the overarching concepts behind the research. Zach, who is a research analyst, works with me on a more day-to-day basis. I have a picture of him as well, but I haven't asked him if I can put it up here yet, so hopefully that will be coming soon :) Enjoy!

      Here is my lab bench. It's a lot cleaner when I'm not working, I promise.

These are just a couple of me working on a mini plasmid prep.

Adios!

Upon Zach's permission: