Amazing Weekend
I think this past weekend was one of the best ever! On Friday I celebrated my 22nd birthday… I know, I'm old! I was planning on having a few friends come over and celebrate it with me. My roommates took me out to dinner, and when we returned to the apartment I opened the door and all my friends yelled "SURPRISE!" I was not expecting that at all. Everyone there played along by either telling me they weren't coming over or they couldn't come over till late. It was an awesome birthday! Saturday, I drove down to Richmond, Virginia to help celebrate a friend's 21st. They showed me around Richmond since I have never been there before which was pretty cool. It was great being able to hang out with these girls because I hardly get to see all of them together. On Sunday I had to get up bright and early to make the drive back to JMU in order to pick up my roommate and then we proceeded to drive to the Nissan Pavilion to see the Dave Matthews Band Concert. While up at the concert I met up with a couple of friends from freshman year which was pretty cool. The concert was absolutely amazing. It was a great way to end an incredible weekend.
But now it's the beginning of the week which means back to working in the lab. Yesterday, my lab partner and I spent most of our time ligating and transforming our cultures. After the transformation process, we streak out agar plates which are left in an incubator overnight so that the bacteria can grow. The plates are placed in the incubator in order to give the bacteria the most ideal environmental conditions for growing. Today, when my lab partner and I went into lab to check our cultures we found out that our plates came out negative, meaning there were no bacteria colonies present. We then had a decision to make. Because this was our second time in failing we had the choices of either starting completely over and re-PCRing our samples OR we could try to re-transform. We decided that it would probably be in our best interest to start completely over incase a mistake occured in the beginning steps of our experiment which might be the reason why we are failing in getting any bacterial colonies. Hopefully things go better for us this time around. Well I guess that's enough for now. It's gorgeous outside today so I'm going to the pool. Enjoy summer while it's here!
Posted by Kristen on June 28, 2005 09:34 AM | Link | Email Kristen
Lots to look forward to
Hey Everyone! I just thought I'd update my blog. This past weekend I drove home to work at my restaurant and spend some time at home with my family for Father's Day. It felt so great to be back at the shore once again. I can't wait till I go back for good! I drove back to JMU early Monday morning to work in the lab. So far this past week we have clean-cut-clean our PCR and transformed them into competent cells. For those of you who do not know what competent cells are, they are cells which can accept extra chromosomal DNA. Following this, my partner and I minipreped our samples to assure that our DNA was still present and digested it with restriction enzymes. The purpose of the digestion is to assure that our minpreps were correct and the DNA is present. Unfortunately our results did not come out as planned. All of our results turned out to be negative which means that our minipreps failed and there were no clones. Because of this tomorrow will be spent re-PCRing and hopefully everything will work out better next time. So that is a little update on how everything in lab is going. To anybody who is nervous about working in the lab, have no fear. The professors assure that everyone is properly trained and familiar with all procedures being conducted in the lab and will walk through everything until you understand what it is that's being done.
I'm looking forward to this upcoming weekend for a couple of reasons. First, it is my birthday on Friday. I can't believe I'm turning 22. Next, on Saturday I will be driving to Richmond to where I will meet up with the girls who I lived on my hall freshman year to celebrate another birthday. Lastly, on Sunday I will be driving to Nissan Pavilion in Northern Virginia to go to a Dave Matthew's Band concert with some friends. Hopefully next week, I'll have some good pictures to post for all of you…
Posted by Kristen on June 24, 2005 08:26 AM | Link | Email Kristen
Great times with friends
Throughout my time here at JMU I feel extremely lucky to have met the people that I have. All my friends are truly genuine. Freshman year I lived in Hillside which is a dorm located on campus. My roommate and I got along great as well as the rest of the girls on my hall. We all try to get together once in a while to catch up on things that have been going on. This past weekend some of my friends drove down to celebrate another one of my friend's birthday. It turned out to be an awesome weekend. We barbequed all day long and did not have to worry about a thing such as school work.
Monday I had to return to working in the lab. My partner and I continued to work on a previous project that we started and stopped working on a few weeks ago. The reason we stopped working on it was because our protein had turned out to be insoluble. We were not the only group with this problem, many other encountered insoluble proteins. Because of this, my professor, Dr. Raab, held a meeting where we collaborated and formulated another game plan on how to attack this protein. We came up with the idea of developing a new vector that we would insert our genes of interest. Some students in the past had a lot of luck with this technique. The only problem is that we have to wait for our professor to develope this vector. My partner and I were able to leave the lab very early yesterday and go to the pool because the vector was not available yet. I'm kind of hoping the same thing will happen today because it's suppose to be in the low 90's today and I would absolutely just love to go sit by the pool… but I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Tomorrow I am driving back to Jersey so I can work at my restaurant as well as spend Father's Day with my dad! It will be very nice to be home for the weekend, though I will probably be spending more time at the restaurant than I do at my own house. Oh well, I'm broke and need the money ...lol
Posted by Kristen on June 14, 2005 10:24 AM | Link | Email Kristen
Working in a lab
For the past couple of days in the lab, my partner and I have been running verification tests known as digests in order to assure that our DNA is still present in our cultures. After the digests have been completed our samples are run on a gel electrophoresis so that the length of the bands can be determined. Since no bands can be seen on our gel after the completion of our digests, my partner and I had to conduct another miniprep today on our samples to assure that our DNA is still present within our cultures. Luckily, these test results came back positive assuring that there is DNA still present. After this was determined we had to grow up our cultures in E. coli which is known as inoculation. This process took about 4 hours because we had to wait till our cultures had an absorbency of about .5 on the spectrometer. Our cultures were then harvested and prepared to be run on columns in order to gather the proteins. My partner and I spent approximately 7 hours in the lab while my professor spent an additional 3 hours working on our project. From this you can see how time consuming working in a lab can be, but also there is a very rewarding feeling that comes with this after realizing what you have accomplished. Here are some pictures of the lab that I work in like I promised you...
These pictures show you what my lab looks like
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Here is a picture of me loading a gel
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And lastly this is the machine that allows us to read the different size bands on the gel
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In some of this work seems to be over your head, please don't worry. All the professors (Dr. Raab, Dr. McKown, and Dr. Coffman) see that you are trained with the proper lab protocols and well as proper lab technique. Before entering the biotechnology lab, I did not have very much experience working with the machinery that I use now. Everyone is extremely helpful and will take the time to thoroughly explain anything to you and it is for some of these reasons why I enjoy the Biotechnology sector here in ISAT so much!
Posted by Kristen on June 9, 2005 09:30 AM | Link | Email Kristen
The Summer Weather Has Arrived
It is definitely starting to feel like summer here in the Shenandoah Valley. My roommates and I turned on our air conditioner for the first time the other night. And let me tell you... when it's hot, it's HOT!
Yesterday turned out to be a very long day for me in the lab. Our last project was not working out the way it should have been. The results were negative and there were some problems arising. Because of this, we were moved to another project in which one of our professors, Dr. Coffman, had already been working on. My partner and I went in at about 9:30 in order to digest the protein. The entire digestion process takes about an hour and a half. After digestion, an electrophoresis gel is run for verification to assure that the correct DNA is present. At the time, we were sharing our gel with another group and by accident they disposed of the gel before we were able to get our picture which meant that the entire process had to be completed all over again. So later that afternoon I had to run another digestion, but during this time there was a mix up with one of the chemicals and because of this our gel did not run correctly. So now it looks like I might have to redo this test again today. As you will learn quickly, lab work tends to be very repetitious, so there needs to be an interest for doing what you are doing. I will try to post some pictures this week of what exactly goes on inside the lab.
Last night after lab, a bunch of the guys and I got together and decided to go bowling. Here in Harrisonburg, the bowling alley has specials during Monday Night Bowling. Games are very cheap. This tends to be very popular among the JMU community, so it's a great way to go out, have fun, and catch up with some friends that you don't normally get to see. Well I hope you're all enjoying summer, I know I am. Till next time...
Posted by Kristen on June 7, 2005 11:56 AM | Link | Email Kristen
Finally starting to feel like summer...
Well as you know, this past weekend was Memorial Day Weekend. My parents own a house at the Jersey shore which is where I tend to spend most of my time during the summer. I work as a waitress at the Beach Club Café located on 13th Street and the boardwalk. There were so many people down in Ocean City. Here is a picture of the view of the boardwalk from my restaurant.
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My house is located on the bay which is so cool. Sunrise is beautiful, especially when the water is so peaceful. Here are a few pictures from my dock that I took before I was going to work.
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It felt so great to be back at the shore. Ocean City, New Jersey was recently named The Nations #1 Family Resort. Since it was the holiday weekend, I decided to drive home to work a couple of hours and try to make a little bit of money. Even though I have an internship here in Harrisonburg for the summer, you’ll quickly learn they do not pay enough money to be able to pay the bills for an entire school year.
The only bad thing about living in New Jersey is the drive to JMU. Since I had to be in the lab yesterday morning I had to be on the road by 3:30am in order to beat morning rush hour. Oh well... what can you really do about it...
Since being back, my lab partner and I started another research project for USAMRIID. This project involves the CapD protein and the DNA of anthrax. Today we completed minipreps which are used to verify that we have our plasmids. But unfortunately our results were negative meaning something must have gone wrong throughout the process. Instead of back tracking and trying to determine where we went wrong, we were assigned another task. Tomorrow, Nicole and I will assist Dr. Coffman on some of the research that he is conducting. We will be running minipreps on his samples to verify his plasmids and aid him and Dr. Raab in any research they need until we are assigned another project. For the rest of the day, I’ll probably just hang out and catch up on some lost sleep since the weather is kind of gloomy. Great day to watch a movie if you ask me!
Posted by Kristen on June 2, 2005 08:30 AM | Link | Email Kristen
My First Blog
Hey everybody! My name is Kristen, I’m going to be a senior this upcoming fall semester. I thought I’d begin by giving you some background information about myself. I’m from Marlton, New Jersey which is home to the Cherokee Chiefs. During my summers I usually spend time at the Jersey Shore working as a waitress on the boardwalk. During my free time I love to play sports (hockey, softball, soccer, etc), go to the beach, or watch movies and hang out with friends.
You might be wondering why I choose to go to JMU. One of the main reasons was because of the Integrated Science and Technology (ISAT) program. While in high school I knew I wanted to go to a university and study either math or science, but I was not sure which one I liked more. I heard of JMU through one of my soccer teammates who was accepted and was planning to major in ISAT. My dad and I decided to visit because of the great reputation JMU has and all the positive things I had been hearing from other people about the school. We made a day trip of it. When I first came to JMU, I was a little overwhelmed visiting such a large school. I had doubt in my mind right from the start, but my dad talked to me and said, "Just give it a chance". After I took the tour, I knew I had found the university in which I wanted to pursue my Undergraduate degree. Everything about JMU made it appealing. The campus was beautiful, school spirit was high, and every single person I encountered while on my tour was so nice and extremely helpful.
After I knew this was where I wanted to go to school, I started doing some research about the ISAT program. ISAT incorporates both science and math within its major, which I felt was exactly what I wanted. I figured if I don't like the classes, I can always change my major. Well, it's going to be my senior year and I am still an ISAT major. I can't believe how fast college is going.
So far I have given you information on why I have chosen JMU as well as why I am an ISAT major. Now I'll tell you what I am doing with my summer. Currently I have an internship under the supervision of Dr. Raab working in the biotechnology lab here at JMU. We are working in collaboration with the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). USAMRIID is responsible for all the vaccination testing against biological weapons such as Anthrax, Plague, Ebola, etc. They send us the DNA of the biological weapon and we purify the proteins. Once we have our proteins we send our research back to them and they will use that in their vaccination testing. Don't worry, we do not have the actual bugs in our lab, we only work with the DNA, so we are perfectly safe at all times.
Well I guess that's all for right now, I'll keep you posted on how the internship is going as well as the rest of my summer. Feel free to send me any questions you may have about the research I am doing, the ISAT program, or even some general questions you may have about college.
Posted by Kristen on June 1, 2005 11:29 AM | Link | Email Kristen
