Internship

About the Internship Site

The main goal of my internship site's research is to expand extremely small parasites called Plasmodium falciparum, which causes malaria symptoms, in order to study and understand their structures. By understanding how different a parasite functions and is able to enter our red blood cells, we can use that information to develop efficient malaria vaccines. One interesting fact about Plasmodium falciparum, is that it has evolved over time to be transmitted from one human to another through mosquitoes, because mosquitos inherently feed on the blood of humans.   

Elevator Pitch Visual

Workplace

Skills that I have gained that can already contribute to my work include:

• My proficiency with standard wet lab supplies and procedure

• My experience with microscopes 

• The ability to work as a team on a project

• The ability to give and receive criticism

• The ability to adapt to difficult situations

The first two skills are relevant for the lab work by itself, which I have gained in various lab classes in high school and college, but the last three skills are important in any job you are in. I have gained the last three skills from the two part-time jobs I have had. I was able to gain these skills through numerous social interactions and asking my supervisors for feedback on my performance so I would be able to improve. These skills will help me to complete my internship by making my work easier and I will be able to complete more tasks to add to the main goal of the internship. Refining these skills is what I strive to do in this internship, and I will do that with tons of practice and criticism. 

Skills I gained throughout the year:

Throughout the year, I worked on many daily chores such as cleaning glassware, autoclaving waste and glassware, making pipette tip boxes, and most importantly making expansion microscopy coverslips and dishes. I did do other miscellaneous chores when prompted and also shadowed and helped my team members when they were participating in their own work. By making sure the lab was in order, make team members could work on more important work to contribute to their studies. Making several batches of coverslips and dishes a week would help to make the protocol shorter so more work could get done. Most of the intense work was put into researching and studying the protocol and how PCR contributes to the lab. While not working in the lab, I did this research. 

Connections to coursework: 

      During my first semester of my internship, I focused mainly on lab work. This lab work consisted of some things I had already learned in previous general biology labs such as general lab safety, cleaning of dishware, using a pipetteman, gel electrophoresis, creating agarose gels, and accurately measuring and dispensing different substances. During the second semester I did mainly research. I took a cell biology class during this time, which greatly improved my understanding of the material I learned about in the first semester, which in turned helped my research. 

Project Summary: Review of Literature

Summary of Project:

My project was a research project on polymerase chain reaction (PCR). I complied 8 different sources into a scientific review of literature to improve my research skills. 

Abstract of Project:

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a technique used to amplify a small quantity of DNA to make millions of copies. PCR is a key tool in molecular biology, but traditional PCR only measures DNA at the end of amplification (endpoint detection), making it hard to quantify accurately. Real-time PCR (RT-PCR) solves this by monitoring DNA amplification throughout its process, using fluorescent dyes or probes. RT-PCR is a key component in biology that helps to identify illnesses such as COVID-19 and Cholera and can also be important to determine water quality. For even more accuracy, digital PCR (dPCR) splits samples so they can be amplified thousands of individual times, giving exact counts of DNA molecules without needing reference standards like in RT-PCR. This makes dPCR ideal for detecting rare genetic changes or low amounts of DNA. This review covers the history and basic principles of this technique, explains RT-PCR, and explains digital PCR. 

Project link: https://sites.google.com/iu.edu/saitzlhsi2025?usp=sharing

Successes and Challenges

Sucesses

I have felt successful when I started completing harder lab tasks by myself. I also felt successful when I went over the lab protocol with my supervisor and made sure that I understood what was going on, I felt like this was a big step. In order to complete harder tasks, I read over the protocol and asked questions when I needed to. Then, I annotated the protocol so I could understand what was going on when I went through it with my supervisor. In order to succeed in this task, I researched concepts that I was unfamiliar with and used my new-found knowledge in order to have a productive time with my supervisor. By using this approach of researching and studying unfamiliar ideas or concepts when approaching a new opportunity can help me to feel prepared and confident in myself and can also calm my nerves in pressing situations. 

The times in which I was successful was when I researched topics and presented it to my supervisor. When presenting, my supervisor would tweak my presentation and help me to articulate my thoughts in a way that was accurate and also in my own words. By going through this exercise, I learned some ways in which my thoughts can be synthesized to accurately state the science. This will help me in forensic biology when I need to present my findings in court. 

Challenges

Two challenging things would be understanding some concepts relating to the protocol and paper pertaining to the lab and finding a more complicated skill that will relate to my field of study that I could transfer over. It has been hard for me to understand most things that are talked about in this lab. I am a sophomore and have only taken two biology classes so far in my college career. The lack of experience I have in the field of biology has made me feel less and less smart as the internship has gone on. I feel that taking my third biology class in the spring semester will help me tremendously to gain new insight on my internship, and to learn and grow more in what I ultimately want to do.