Duke University | Howard Hughes Undergraduate Program

    Almost at the end of the Howard Hughes program, abstract, poster, blogs, all the stuff come together which makes me feel that it just so many stuff need to be done and too little time I still have. 

   For the seminars, most of them are exciting and I really like it. Although sometimes there are too many biological terminologies contain in the seamier which totally confused me, I still think it is a good opportunity for me to touch a broad view of cell and molecule biology; what they are doing and how they are doing. And that is also something makes me really appreciate the Howard Hughes program. You can always easily knock one professor’s door and working in one lab, but, you might never get a chance to let 10 professors spend 10 hours to explain what they are doing to you by yourself.

    About my research, Q-PCR is running now and we are about to get our major results today within approximately 1 hour. Whether our guess right or not about that gene at 7 weeks before, will end today and, yea, looking forward to seeing the result.
 

Again, My PhD mentor left me alone and went to a conference. But after 5 weeks training, I am so glad that I can finally do all the stuff by myself now. I guess that is the amazing part of the Howard Hughes Program. Because this program force me not only following thing which my mentor told me, but also learn how to think and doing experiment by myself.

Although I have worked in this lab for half year, but before this summer, most of my jobs are growing plants and measuring them (people usually call it “phenotypeing”, but it just really nothing than measuring plant.) Honestly, before this summer, I think this lab’s research is kind of “boring” because everything I am doing here is measuring plants, but through this summer, things becomes totally different and much more interesting. I start to learn the entire research process in this lab, like phenotyping, QTL mapping, trying to find gene and doing some molecular working. I guess that is real science and lab working, it is boring if you only doing one part of the whole experiments. But if you get involved into the whole process and know exactly what you are doing and what kinds of results you are looking for, things will becomes much more interesting and amazing.

OK, so, the status of my research:

My research is about involvement of Na+/H+ antiporter in the evolution of salt tolerance in Mimulus guttatus. And what we are doing is first we need to guess which gene contributes to salt tolerance thought the QTL map, after that, we need to extract RNA from the plant to check whether it is that gene or not.

My mentor finished QTL mapping before I come and he guessed one gene A might contribute to salt tolerance, and we are now checking whether A is that gene or not by extracting RNA from Mimulus guttatus and if A turns on more in salt tolerance plant than none salt tolerance plant, this means that A is the gene which contribute to salt tolerance.

We already did the RNA extraction and run it on the gel, but we failed to see the result because the control gene (elongation factor) was not showing the same color. So, rather than using regular PCR, we will use QPCR next week to see if we can get the better results.

Meanwhile, I try to figure out the sequence of the gene A in Mimulus guttatus too. So, we designed primer last week and run the PCR, half of the primers worked but the rest of them did not work. So, I redesigned some primers and try to redo the PCR this week. Hopefully this time it will work.
 

This is the pic of that gene, I guess it will be cool if I post pic on the blog.

My first gel image! From PCR to gel loading to gel watching, first experiment which totally did by myself and it is awesome!

Sorry for updating this late!

In Willis lab, most of the graduate students are studying Mimulus, which is a small yellow monkeyflower.

Mimulus is a good genetic research system which is being used to explain the genetic mechanisms of adaptation and speciation in an ecological context. Mimulus species contains a lot of attributes which facilitate genetic experimentation. For example, most of the Mimulus species in the genus are self-compatible and most of them have only a 6-12 week generation time under experimental conditions. So, the main goals for Willis lab, as they said, is to “understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of how species are formed, the origin of reproductive isolating barriers, mechanisms by which genetic variation is maintained, and the underyling genetic architecture of adaptive traits.”
 

A pic of mimulus in green house.

See how cool these yellow flowers are!

Professor John Willis, he is a really nice professor.

My mentor David Lowry is a fifth year graduate student in the Duke University Program in Genetics and Genomic. He finished his undergraduate study at UC Berkeley. After graduated, he thought that he wanted to do some research which can combine ecology and molecular biology, so he picked Willis lab and started to study Mimulus. Yea, by the way, he is a great scientist.
So, his study is mainly focusing on the genetic adaptation of Mimulus guttatus, to the coast versus inland habitat, due to reproductive isolation. His current study, based on my understanding, is to figure out why the coast Mimulus species is salt tolerant and the inland one is not, and their genetic differences between the coast and inland Mimulus. The future application for this research is that if we can figure out which gene contribute salt tolerance, we can eventually apply this to crops and make them grow at high salt concentration place.
Therefore, my summer research is also focusing on salt tolerant of Mimulus guttatus and Yea, this right, it is a cool project.
 

David, transplanting plants.

My other mentor, Kevin Wright, he is also a fifth year graduate student at Duke University. His study is mainly focusing on the evolution of copper tolerance in Mimulus guttatus populations inhabiting mines in Copperopolis, CA. He is the most lovely and cutest guy in Willis lab. He is the first person I met in this lab and I have worked for him for late half year. Since he just back yesterday, so I do not know what we are going to do together this summer, but I know it is going to be a lot of fun time!

Kevin, I  Steal this pic from his webpage. :-)

  All right! I guess tonight is for blog only! Second one! Go Go Go!

  The reason why I must finish all my blog today is because my entire lab people are back this week and it is going to be crazily busy for the rest of the 4 weeks.

  After carefully understanding the Howard Hughes summer program calendar, I find a series thing which is that we suppose to complete our poster at the end of the 7th week, and, which means that I need to finish my project at the end of 6th week.

  O my god, I can’t imagine how busy I will for the next 4 weeks! And yea, that is my expectations for this summer, busy and crazy! :P

  After I read the assigned article, there are several points which I quite agree with. For instance, “experience is more important than output”. Apparently, it is very hard to get paper published within two months. Do a calculation, if you can publish one paper within two month, which means that you can publish 6 papers within one year. If we say that it takes 5 years to graduate from graduate school which means, you can publish about 30 papers after you get Ph.D. I do not think it most likely will happen. Therefore, although publish a paper is one of my goals for this summer, but I understand that learning experience and understanding the basic methods of scientific research is way more important then get papers.

  Yea, I guess, I will work hard, enjoy the Howard Hughes program and have fun of the real research.