Internship

About the Internship

The purpose of my internship site is to better understand the mechanisms of the liver, this matters because liver fibrosis impacts many individuals all around the world. Did you know that the liver is an incredible spongy organ, however it becomes rigid and hard when it undergoes fibrosis!

There are mainly 4 stages that come with the liver; healthy, fatty, fibrotic, and cirrhosis. The goal of this internship site is to focus on the fibrotic stage and study whether or not its effects can be reversed. There are many proteins and mechansims that are involved in liver fibrosis and our site will aim to look at some of these with the overall goal of finding potential treatments. Liver fibrosis is caused by the excessive depostions of the extracellular matrix proteins which are mainly made up of collagen. These proteins accumulate due to the hepatic stellate cells being in the active stage. Due to these mis-folded proteins, endoplasmic reticulum stress is caused and the unfolded protein response kicks in to relieve this stress. This response is driven by 3 pathways; however our site will mostly look at the PERK. Our goals include figuring out how PERK regulates fibrosis in HSCs during liver injury, to understand the connection between GADD45A and PERK, and lastly to understand how GADD45A controls different proteins that lead to HSC activation and fibrogenesis. The method that we used to get to these goals are using different mouse models that had wild-type or the floxed gene, preforming immunofluorescence and quantifying the data for significance.

Project Summary

My internship focuses on liver fibrosis, which is the third stage in liver damage. The main goal is to see if the effects of fibrosis can be reversed. Fibrosis happens when the hepatic stellate cells cause a buildup of mis-folded proteins leading to endoplasmic reticulum stress. This leads to the activation of the unfolded protein response caused by the PERK pathway. This site will attemp to figure out the connection between some of the proteins and pathways involved. To do this, we use different types of mice models, perform lab tests like immunofluorescence, and analyze the results for significance.

Final Project

Liver Fibrosis: A Focus On the Unfolded Protein Response

Workplace

Some of the skills or strengths that I already have within me that will contribute to my site are precision, passion to learn, and flexibility. Precision is required within lab work and when it comes time to testing different subjects. I consider myself strong when it comes to doing things in an accurate manner whether it be for school or personal life. My passion to learn will also assist in my internship as it will reflect in my work and showing up. Lastly, I consider myself flexible in terms of doing different things to achieve the same overall big goal.

At the beginning of the year, I was mostly learning, asking questions, and working alongside with my supervisors. Towards the end of the year, I was performing tasks independelty that I was told to do by my supervisors. My contributions impacts the larger project as I make it easier to gather the details such as taking images or quantifying liver tissues. It got the bigger job done, because it allowed me to gather the data and my supervisors to focus on interpreting the data.

Successes and Challenges

One of the times that I felt successful as an intern was when I performed a treatment (Immunofluorescence) on the liver cells independently. Immunofluorescense was a concept that I did not comprehend at first, it is the procedure where specific antibodies are recognized by using a dye. I watched my graduate student do this procedure and each time I assisted, and when it came time to do this procedure on my own I felt proud. I did this procedure by confirming each steps I took and most of the steps I took were correct and I felt that I learned the most on that day since it was all hands on. It is one of the main procedures that I am expected to learn and master since it is a huge part of our study and research.

Another time I felt successful was when I collected data into excel about the amount of liver fibrosis present. This made me visualize what our study aims to do, simply hearing about something is one thing but visualizing and seeing images made it seem more realistic. I also felt more confident about using excel, before I was nervous to use this since I could never figure out the functions but now if I ever have to use this in chemistry lab or any other classes I feel perfectly capable and confident about it.

One of the challenges that I faced this semester is understanding and studying liver fibrosis which is the main purpose of my site. There are many mechanisms, structures, and functions of an organ such as the liver and even to understand the basic concepts, practice is required. Sometimes, I do not understand the purposes behind the procedures we do because my foundation is not as strong yet. However, whenever I have felt lost the ones around me have always gone above and beyond to make sure I am caught up. I have had many instances where I felt confident enough to tell the graduate student that I work with that I do not understand, and each time I have did that, she has illustrated in simple drawings and words what we are doing and the purpose behind it. For example, I did not understand dilutions and how to determine what volume to use to prepare certain mixtures and instead of simply telling me, my graduate student used equations from chemistry that she knew would make more sense to me to explain a simple procedure to me. From this challenge, I learned that asking for help is intimidating however it is also important and a skill that everyone should have. I could have not asked for help and did research in my own time, however that would not have made me feel connected to the ones that I rely on. Asking for help and clarification also makes the expectations clear since I better understand what the purpose and mission of the site is.

Another challenge I faced is managing my time amongst LHSI, school, and personal life. There have been some weeks where I felt that I could not come into work for my regular hours, because of school workload. This challenge occurred, because of not being able to time manage well or stick to a plan. Being a full time student along with having other responsibilities requires proper time management and planning skills. I feel that I have a plan to accomplish all of my goals and priorities, however sticking to this plan was hard for me. I have always felt that I can talk to my supervisor about these things, one week I felt overwhelmed with an upcoming test and I communicated to my supervisor about it beforehand and we both made a plan to complete my responsibilities with the site by making up the hours the following week. Moreover, my supervisor was willing to sit down with me and discuss how to manage school and LHSI. From this challenge, I learned to always communicate beforehand and the results of that will almost always be positive.

I think and I know that my supervisor and graduate student are great resources that will assist me in any challenges that come up in the future, I do not hesitate communicating with them about any challenge I am facing whether that be related to LHSI or anything else.

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