Duke University | Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program

It's Thursday and tomorrow is the poster session and the last day of the program. It's almost bittersweet. I am very pleased with my poster and am looking forward to the poster presentations. I am sure everyone will do a great job. But, I am reluctant to leave my lab so soon. I entered this summer promising myself that I would soak in the experience each and everyday and take advantage of all the opportunities open to myself. I am yet to change my temperament. Apart from the amazing amount of information I learned in regards to sea urchin developmental gene regulation, I was able to develop a mature sense of dedication, drive, and responsibility. I find myself sitting in my lab right now, feeling as if I have been here for much longer than 7 weeks. That's a good feeling.

I hope to continue involvement with my lab study and lab once the program concludes. As senior year rolls around, I plan to be as proactive as possible and utilize the rest of my summer.

I would once again like to thank the Howard Hughes Pre College Program for such a engaging and unforgettable experience. I also owe a great amount of thanks to the Wray Lab for making this experience what it was and then some.

Take care and have a great summer.

Although my time in the lab has not been too extensive, these previous weeks in the program have shown me that the researcher-research relationship is one compromised of give and take situations and lessons. I have many times found myself "in the zone" hard at work in the lab, when all of a sudden I find myself working much faster and more efficiently than i had imagined. Those are the good times. But, some of the less exciting lab experiences have been spent staring at a beaker or Eucidaris embryo's hoping to be able to extract a suffiecient amount for RLT fixation or morphology samples. In my opinion, any and every experience should not be taken for granted because something, anything can be learned whether it is from a simple pipetting error or a groundbreaking discovery.

It's been over four weeks in the program. Time flys. Although time passes quick,each and every day is a new learning experience. My day begins with morning seminars, which I have found to be one of my favorite parts of the program. It allows us fellows to gain exposure and insight on diverse fields within in the scientfic realm. After morning seminars, I continue on to Wray Lab in French Science Center. The mornings usually consist of prepping solutions and outlining the days goals with my mentor, Courntey Babbit. Whether I am creating tRNA or cDNA, the majority of mornings are spent in the lab itself. Afternoons are ideal time to run tests such as Thermal Cycles or PCRs. After my lunch break, which is always  interesting because the Wray Lab prides itself on gastronmic knowledge, I usually run samples that have undergone PCR on gels through electrophoresis. The day ends with gel analysis and proactive planning.

Recently, I started my research project of tracing genetic expression in Sea Urchins, Eucidaris Tribuloides, in order to either identify convergence among the expression of spicule forming cells or to either identify the completly new medium of expression of a gene. However, to understand the signficance and relevance of my particular project, the research of the entire Wray Lab must be known. The individuals in the lab interested in the evolution of transcriptional regulation and gene networks in sea urchins hope to to understand the consequences of genetic variation on network function, as well as the evolutionary mechanisms that operate on this variation. So basically, we are hoping to understand the expression of specfied genes within different species of sea urchins and whether these expressional systems are evolutionarily similar or whether the same gene can be controlling completely different mechanisms. The comparisons between genetic expression in sea urchins will, on a generalized level, help us to better understand the evolutionary cycle and the genetic varience among similar species.

All in all, I am really excited to continue my research and begin obtaining data to be studied even more in depth.

Courtney Babbitt, a postdocotoral researcher in the Wray Lab, is from the onset a driven, inspiring, and extremely intelligent scientific connoisseur. She claims to not being able to remember a time when she was not interested in science. Her ambitious and motivated teperament led her to pursue palentology in her undergraduate studies at Columbia University, followed by graduate studies at the University of Chicago. As she matured in her scientific interests, Courtney decided to embark upon a journey daunting to even the most intellectually driven, obtaining a post-doctoral degree at our very own Duke University. Good choice. As Courtney and I sat in our comfertable chairs chatting it up, I could not help but feel inspired by her raw, untainted interest and passion for scientific inquiry  that was made clear when she said she belongs in science. Science is passion.

Courtney is currently attempting to identify and characterize functional changes in cis-regulatory sequences that may have played a role in evolutionary cognitive traits. To go about this, her research consists of examining candidate genes with known promoter polymorphisms that are statistically associated with affective and developmental disorders in humans. This is not a one-man or ,wait, better yet one-women job, it takes a dedicated and cooperative team. The Wray lab is just that. Its impressive to see such intense research being attacked and emabrked upon from all angles by various individuals with given specialties.

As I was being told such in depth ambitions and hopeful scientific inquiries, I could not help but ask Courtney, what has kept her passion for science so strong through all these years and she answered with no hesitation? The more you find out, the more questions you have, and the more you want to know. Advancements in science are pinancles and great feats, especially when it comes to research, which many times is similar to taking two steps forward and one step back. However, science is not just reaching a destination and publishing it in journal, science is the pursuit. The pursuit of knowledge. The pursuit of answers. The pursuit of mystery. The pursuit of questions.