Duke University | Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program

Almost every morning, all the Howard Hughes kids meet up in the BioSci building and we either have group discussions, amazing seminars, or field trips (!!). Then we split up into our labs and begin work there (usually around 9:30 to 10:00)

Every morning the fish are fed, egg boxes are checked, and the number of eggs from each tank is recorded. Depending on the number of eggs the fish choose to provide, we may spawn one or two tanks to collect eggs for experiments.

One of the first things you learn when working with living organisms is that they are fickle. They're selfish and they honestly do not care whether or not you get enough eggs for your experiment. Therefore, you must plan your day around their schedules. On good days, there will be a lot of pregnant fish ("fatties") in both populations (King's Creek and Elizabeth River), and you'll have a nice, busy day where you'll get lots of work done. Inevitably, there will also be days where you have nothing to work with, and it is on days like this that you find time to write blog posts.

Slacker days usually consist of a lot of paper-reading, wikipedia-surfing (I try to stay on topic as much as I can), email-checking, AP-Chem-ing, and blogging, of course. Sometimes I'll shadow someone in my lab while they are doing their experiments, which are totally different from mine. I really enjoy that, because while I will not need to do an EROD assay for this particular project, it's really cool looking at flourescent fish bladders under the microscope. And it might be useful later on, I guess. Through shadowing others I have also chopped/mashed up fish for body PAH-level tests, screened zebrafish embryos, helped with RNA extractions and RT-PCR, and scored fish deformities. Other than that, I just try to make myself helpful.

If we actually do get a good number of eggs out of the egg boxes, we'll manually spawn a few tanks of Killifish for some embryos. The reason why we manually spawn fish (a LOT harder than it sounds, hopefully) is that we want the eggs to be approximately the same age while we are doing our experiments. Within a few hours, an embryo can go from being 1 cell to 32 cells, so to get a uniform experimental group we spawn them at the same time. Plus, manually spawned eggs are much better quality, in general.

Next, I screen the fish under a microscope. I separate the bad eggs from the healthy ones. This is usually a long and arduous process, especially when you have thousands of eggs to screen. Always, always, ALWAYS bring your iPod to the lab; you do not want to be stuck screening eggs without it. Your eyes will bleed from staring at the tiny little buggers for hours on end (this is unavoidable), but there is no reason why you need to be bored out of your mind as well.

In the afternoon, we dose the embryos that we gathered in the morning. We give them their poison. Then we record mortality rates at 24 and 48 hours. I always feel bad knowing that even the controls, which I consider lucky since they usually survive my experiments, will die when we're done with them. To euthanize embryos we just pop them in the freezer for a few hours. But then again, we eat fish all the time, and don't feel bad about eating caviar, so I guess this isn't that different.

Max usually comes by the lab in the late afternoon to feed the fish, change the water in the killifish systems, and make sure everything's running properly. Most days it is, but once in a while something goes wrong. Like yesterday. One of the pumps in the Z-system broke, lowering the dissolved oxygen levels in the water. As a result, a few of the bigger fish were asphyxiated. By the way, Max is ginormous (6'8''??). Just fyi.

Haha okay so yesterday we had to evacuate the building because of a "fire" (this isn't really an ordinary day-in-the-life story, though I hear false fire alarms are pretty common here). Our entire lab was pretty annoyed, since some experiments are time-sensitive, and leaving the building for half an hour would mean re-doing the entire thing. My mentor assumed that the machinery must have broken, because there was a fire drill that morning as well. But I just found out that it was actually Nancy and Lavender's lab's fault. Thanks a lot guys. Just kidding, I still love you. Can you tell that I'm having an easy-breezy morning today?

ANYWAY, I'll stop now! Have an awesome day everyone!
 

 Dr. Di Giulio, the PI of my lab, agreed to block off half an hour of his time for this interview despite the massive amounts of work that had piled up after his trip to Dubai (where he helped set up an Environmental Toxicology program at a local university!). Therefore, I tried my best to capture the essence of his awesomeness in a few short Q & A's (not quite possible). In case he decides to read this...I did the math, and you do not look your age at all!

What made you want to pursue a career in the sciences? In environmental toxicology in particular?

I was drawn to environmental toxicology because I liked the combination of biochemistry/ mechanical biology and field biology. It allows you to apply research to real world problems. I actually got my undergraduate degree in comparative literature, but I got my master's in wildlife biology. For my PhD, my mentor introduced me to environmental toxicology, which was a new field at the time and was just gaining in popularity. Toxicology had been around since the 50's, but it was more of a subset of pharmacology (testing the effects of drugs on humans). Ecotoxicology was largely inspired by Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, and it took around 2 decades before it became a popular field of study.

What was your favorite class in highschool/college? Your least favorite?

Favorites? One class that comes to mind was a Shakespeare class I took as an undergraduate. That sounds funny now, but remember I was majoring in comparative literature at the time. One of the worst classes that I took was a literature criticism class; I hated it. I guess that made me realize that comparative literature wasn't for me. I got my bachelor's degree in 1972 in literature, but I decided that wasn't a field I wanted to pursue. My brother was studying at Harvard Law, and he tried to convince me to study law with him. I took the LSATs and everything, but I just wasn't that interested in law. It just seemed too dull. Actually it was a girlfriend of mine that pointed out, "Well hey, you've always liked nature and environmental protection; maybe you should try a career in that." So I started studying wildlife biology at Texas A+M, and I spent 3 years as a land surveyer and environmental engineer. Because I had spent my undergraduate years studying literature, I had taken the bare minimum number of science classes possible, so I had to take a bunch of basic college level science courses (genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, etc.)

What has been your most fulfilling research project?

Well actually, the project that you all are working on right now, about adaptation- evolutionary ecotoxicology in killifish. I think that's really interesting. I did other projects on basic oxidative stress in fish models, pollutant damage in fish...I've been working with fish ever since I've been here. My graduate projects involved woodland ducks. We studied the effects of cadmium and other heavy metals on their metabolism; we did field work in Chesapeake Bay measuring their effects on avian metabolism. Field work is fun, but lab work is more intellectually satisfying, so I like to balance both.
 

What is the most important lesson you've learned in the process of becoming a scientist?

Let the data that you gather lead you. Don't be narrow-minded in your hypotheses. In the lab there are always surprises; be open to unexpected information. Let it shape you, don't try to shape it.

What is one thing that sets this lab apart from others?

I think that this lab has a greater degree of camaraderie than in most labs. It's really friendly, cooperative, and easygoing. I guess that's not unique to our lab, but our lab is definetly up there [in friendliness]. I suppose that's partially due to the nature of the work we do here; field work attracts idealistic people who aren't just trying to get a good job, but who truly care about what they are doing. Also when I take in students, I choose them for their personalities, not just academic scores. I like people who are open and outgoing and have a good sense of humor.

What are some of your hobbies and interests?

I love the outdoors. I like to go fishing and hunting, hiking with my wife. I guess my love of the outdoors led me into the field of wildlife biology. But that's kind of limiting. I really enjoyed my molecular biology and biochemistry classes as well, and one reason I chose environmental toxicology is that it lets you do both field work and more molecular stuff. It puts laboratory work in the context of the natural world.
 

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

The ability to catch more fishes, haha. That's hard for me. I don't know...I wouldn't really want any super superpowers. I think those would be inconvenient.

What was your path to becoming the PI of a lab like?

Long and convoluted! At the University of Texas, they were just starting a new program called Plan 2 that was meant to replicate a small liberal arts school on a bigger campus. That resulted in better teachers, smaller classes, and allowed me to design a non-traditional major. I've had a lot of twists and turns in my academic career- switching from comparative literature to wildlife biology to environmental toxicology- and that resulted in me being about 4 years older than the other PhD students, but I have no regrets. As a graduate student, I knew that I wanted to be a college professor. When you want to be a professor and you want to do scientific research, that's basically what a PI is. My favorite class that I teach here is Environmental Toxicology (formerly Ecotoxicology), which is a graduate level class. I also co-teach Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology, which is my only undergraduate course.

What advice would you give to an aspiring scientist (high-schooler)?

Try to expose yourself to a variety of research opportunities. Stay open-minded. Some people zone in on one very specific area of interest, and if they are disappointed by it, they assume that that's just what science is like, but that's not true. Every field is different. So sample a variety of experiences- biomedical, environmental, etc., and get a feel for research.
 

Yesterday, I donned my first white labcoat. Sadly, it served its purpose in an unexpected way. The night before, the pH meter, which was supposed to maintain the zebrafish tank-water at a constant pH of around 7, went bonkers and released enough acid to bring the actual pH to around 3. Unsurprisingly, within 3 hours, 80% of the zebrafish were dead. When I got to the lab today I witnessed the eerie sight of rows and rows of empty fish tanks; we spent around 2 and a half hours washing the empty tanks with bleach to prep them for the new fish, which will be arriving next Tuesday. It was a sad sight, since Lindsey had been raising her fish for months to reproductive maturity, and all of that hard work was flushed down the toilet in just a few hours (even the survivors may be useless, since huge fluctuations in pH can cause them to become sterile).

Luckily, the killifish (who, ironically, had the primitive tank system) survived the night just fine. Hopefully the lab will be safe and sound on Monday!

Hey all! I’m Violette. I’m a graduating sophomore from Chapel Hill High (go Tigers!), and a rising junior at NCSSM (go Unicorns!). Two of my main passions are biology and visual art, and I've participated in extracurriculars that correspond- I LOVE my CHHS Science Olympiad team (YOU GUYS ROCK!) and my wonderful Art Club. I also enjoy playing lacrosse and swimming, as well as reading, sleeping, and eating. This is my fourth day working at the Di Giulio Lab, an environmental toxicology lab that, put [too] simply, studies the effects of pollutants on certain species of fish- namely, killifish and zebrafish. It’s a pretty chill, t-shirt and jeans kind of lab (as I’ve proven by wearing t-shirts and jeans every day). It’s been shrinking lately, with students graduating and whatnot, so at the moment it’s a pretty small lab. The PI is, of course, Dr. Richard Di Giulio. I’ve also met Cole, Lindsey, Daewoon, Bryan, and Max so far. Everyone’s been really friendly and charismatic, so I’m really excited to get to know them better over the next 6 weeks. 

The Wonder-wall. Zebrafish!

Unlike most of my fellow bloggers, I don’t have a set project or mentor yet. This week I’ve been tagging along and shadowing anyone who’s doing something interesting, be that RNA isolation, RtPCR, or scoring deformities. Through this, I have learned some basic lab protocols, gotten some practical tips, and gotten a better sense of what lab life is all about. Of course, I’ve also spent a fair amount of time just reading articles pertaining to the lab’s work so that I’ll be able to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing.

Dosing the killifish larvae with silver nitrates and silver PVP.

I’ve especially enjoyed actually working with the fish. While it sounds horribly morbid, I found the process of scoring killifish embryo deformities fascinating. Under the naked eye, all the fish eggs look like, well, caviar, but using a fancy microscope we were able to look at them up close on the computer screen. Then we would rate them based on how healthy their hearts were and how well their pigment cells were developing (poorly developed pigment cells indicate that the embryo has edema, another side effect of environmental contamination). Healthy hearts consisted of two well-aligned and well-defined chambers and got a 0 rating. Bad hearts were long and stringy, lopsided, and/or very weak, and warranted either a 1 or 2, depending on the severity of the deformity. Some of the fish that were unlucky enough to be dosed with the nastier chemicals developed some ridiculously screwed up hearts. Is it wrong for me to wish awful things on those poor fish?

Killifish Larvae; so innocent and naive...

 All in all, it’s been a great first week. All of the other Howard Hugh-ers are amazingly talented, intelligent, wonderful people, and I feel super lucky to have been granted the opportunity to meet all of them. Peace out!