Blog Challenge #3- Kelly Pesta

For our third blog challenge we were suppose to take a picture of the SEED students in their lab working on their project. Below are the pictures I took:

 Cleaning a mortar and pestle with aqua regia.

Pouring sodium hydroxide into a beaker.

Rinsing solutions.

Weighing dithione.

Labeling samples.

Looking at output files on a laptop.

 Turning on the ROTOVAP and inspecting the Oxidize Stress Setup.

 Checking on running files.

 

Looking at recombinant DNA from a bucket of ice.

For the second part of the blog challenge we were suppose to interview another SEED student. I interviewed Robert. This is what I learned about him and his project:

Robert is 18 years old, a senior at West Mifflin High School, and this is his first year at Project SEED. He is interested in Science and art, specifically biology and painting. Once he graduates he has multiple interests including: a medical examiner, physical therapist, physician assistant, a high school art teacher, anesthesiologist, or a gynecologist. He hasn't been looking at a specific college to attend because schools have actually been looking at him for track. But he does want to go out of state and if he had to pick a state to go to he would either choose Florida, Ohio, or Oregon. Robert's project is titled The Investigation of Probing Substituent Effects on Fragmentation Energetics for Protonated Peptides Modified to Create N-Terminal Imines. What he is doing is modifying the peptides, putting them through the mass spec, and looking for pathways the peptides are choosing to take when fragmenting. All in all, even though this blog was frustrating at times, I enjoyed this blog the most and had fun taking pictures with the other students and getting to know Robert better.