The Beginning

Hello everyone! I cannot even explain how excited I am to be back at SEED and continue to work with everyone I did last year! Last year my project was on learning molecular biological and biochemical techniques in investigating periplasmic nitrate reductase A. I mainly learned about PCR, gel electrophoresis, and how to grow bacteria. This year is a continuation of that project, except I will actually be able to handle the protein. I have mainly been reviewing  the progress that they made over the year. This is exciting to me because I get to read Sammy's thesis, which has pictures of the gels that I helped him with! Today we are actually going to lysate cells! I also learned about a new technique called IMAC, which allows proteins with an affintity for metal ions to be retained in a column containing immobilized metal ions for the purification of histidine containing proteins. I believe this allows us to get rid of the polyhistidine-tag. So far this year everything is going well. Hopefully it continues to go this well.

First Year!

Well for this being my first year of Project SEED it's off to a wonderful starts. I'm one of 4 new students behind two of our second year members. My first day of Project SEED was nerve racking, since im not good at meeting new people its was perfectly fine. My mentior Jackie is very nice and Emily's mentior Kim is helpful to. We had to do safety training it was alittle boring but it was helpful.

Yesterday being my second day i've gotten alot done i've already gotten my crystals mixed and into the oven. Today was my third day of Project SEED, we really didn't do much because my crystals are still in the oven and wont be cool till tomorrow. But we learned how to use this machine that uses elections to take pictures and you can put anything on there and see your small object down to the little speck of dirt on it. Its really cool.

New Beginnings

With project seed i am going to be working with the Vitamin D receptor. I still don't know what exactly my project is. I haven't gotten much time to talk to Dr. Madura but i'm looking forward to spending my summer working with him and my partners.

So far on my project me and my group haven't done much.  On the first day we simply talked to Dr.Madura about the project and what my group will be doing. He then set us free to complete tutorials for 3 different programs. He also gave us 2 different research papers to read over, they talked about the same topic but i didn't understand either of the papers.  Other then those items we haven't really done anything.

I have high expectations for this project and i'm hoping i'll be able to fulfill. I'm a little nervous about the project since i have to write a 5 page paper on it and not to forget that i have to  present it at a symposium. I'll just like for me and my group to make this project a success.

Project SEED 2013

It's that time again. I am back for my second year as the high school teacher leader and the transition is already much smoother. Of course, the students don't start until Monday, June 17th so we will see how it goes then. We have 6 students this year: 2 second year and 4 newbies. I am thoroughly excited to be back.

We have a few things planned for this year that will be new. The one that is the most exciting is the incorporation of other Project SEED groups from all over the country into our blog. We are hoping that we can find willing participants to post their experiences (pictures and written experiences) from all over.

As soon as the students begin Monday, expect enthusiastic blogging and sharing of experiences throughout the summer. Until next week, I'm out.

Symposium

The symposium went well. At first I was very nervous because I do not like to speak in front of large groups, but as the symposium progressed I became less nervous. The symposium is an event that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

Symposium

My symposium experience was alright compared to last year. Last years symposium experience was a lot better. The symposium helps me build confidence in myself to speak in front of other people. Even though I didn't get a lot of visitors this year it was great to be a part of this program again. It helped me learn so much that will help along the road in the future. Even though this is my last year still got one more symposium to make it my best! See you in Philly!

Symposium

My experience at the symposium was adequate I believe since the amount of people was not few and I was able to answer most questions with ease. However I feel that I could've done better if I spoke with more confidence and/or energy to draw listeners in, since the majority of people who came to my poster seemed bored when I came towards the middle of the explanation of my project. On a side note, I think that the symposium was a great milestone to overcome and to do so gave a good inner feeling. I also felt that others' projects were interesting, though I wasn't able to completely understand all of them.