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My site is researching ways to improve ischemic limbs in diabetics, which could help millions of people as about 1 to 3 millions of Americans are affected by Critical Ischemic Limb. Ischemic limb in diabetics constricts the amount of blood flow there is in blood vessels, which causes poor circulation and causes delay in wound healing.
I am responsible for running laboratory techniques including DNA methylation, PCR, and gel electrophoresis.
Left to right: Mohamad Obeid, me, Dr. Verma, and Dr. Singh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMwdz1kLsFU
https://cdn.clinicallabmanager.com/assets/articleNo/27028/aImg/50882/fda-animal-testing-no-longer-mandatory-before-human-trials-m.webp
https://roche.scene7.com/is/image/RocheDiaProd/immunohistochemistry-graphic-no-bg-v5?scl=1&fmt=png-alpha
Learning and Skills
Learning and Skills
I will use my communicational skills to collaborate more efficiently with my team. Getting to know my team will help me in enhancing our teamwork as we will understand the roles and the responsibilities of each other. I plan on learning how to perform my duties, and my ability to perform my expected duties will improve with the given criticism.
From my internship, I want to learn how to step back and think about the overall picture. Currently, I have been exposed to a few techniques in the lab, and they vary from lab to lab, and I get so caught up in every technique that I lose track of what is the overall goal. I want to become proficient at running PCR, IHC, and DNA amplification. I expect myself to master different techniques and be able to connect how all the techniques are linked. So far, I have gotten better at asking questions when I need assistant, but I want to become more confident in what I do. I am really excited to be working with the team that I am working with because I get to learn a lot. Every employee is working on something completely different than another, which gives me an opportunity to be exposed to more research within my site while maintaining my primary focus on my research. My team is very knowledgable is always willing to answer questions that may arise.
After working at my internship site for about a month, I have become more confident in working independently. I was shown how to perform a protocol once, then I was supervised while performing the protocol, and now I am starting to perform protocols independently. Even with the increase in independence I have, I still have my site team to ask questions when something arises. I am starting to feel that I am a part of a team now as I worked on my communicational skills. I plan on improving on my independent work because I still rely on my direct supervisor to assist me from time to time. I will improve on that skill by repeating the same protocol multiple times as I am learning to perform various protocols at the same time. In addition, I want to improve on interpreting and analyzing results from the experiments I perform because that will help in understanding the importance of running a certain technique on a specific sample.
This internship will help me significantly in my career goal. My goal is to attend medical school and become a future physician. My site is exposing me different aspects in pathology and aids me to understand cellular biology in human tissue and mice tissue. The goal for my site is to test signaling in tissues and ways to improve that signaling, so that injured blood vessels can improve in diabetics. This research is essential to medicine as it will help diabetics in decreasing recovery time when healing from injuries. In addition, it will help me in my medical career as I am learning the process of researching and how it can be applied to real world situations.
At my internship site, I am responsible for running experiments in the lab. For my lab, I perform experiments such as DNA extraction, gel electrophoresis, and PCR. Recently, I was trained to perform Immunohistochemistry to sequence the DNA sequence. Performing such experiments takes patience and accuracy to achieve desired results. In addition to performing them, it's important to step back and reflect on the purpose of each experiment. Because I had taken Genetics lab during my sophomore year, I had performed almost all of the experiments before. I had background knowledge from previous Biology lectures of why some experiments are performed. By working in the lab, I was able to connect back to my biology lectures and labs to understand the purpose and recall some of the procedure. Because I spend a lot of time working on just one technique, I am able to fill up any missing gaps from my knowledge.
Being an intern in the lab has definitely shaped me up. As an intern in a lab setting where communication is essential, I feel as if I have improved upon how I communicate with everyone. It is tough at times to manage everything all at once, but I learned that as long as you inform me about where you stand, it's okay. I got sick at the end of November and could not come in for a couple of days. I had a lab that I had started that needed to be finished within a certain amount of time. Being in that situation caused me to step back from school and work and also reach out to let others know what was up. This open communication is what I recently got better at, and it is my favorite skill and growth I see. Some of my favorite experiences include collaborating with other LHSI interns! We sometimes coordinate our breaks and grab coffee or lunch together, which I love!
Workplace
Workplace
The professionals at my internship site have been welcoming and helpful. The professionals at my site have an amazing communication with one another, and I hope to pick that up and improve upon my communication. One skill that I noticed at my workplace is that everyone is willing to ask questions and ask the supervisor to verify their results, and I hope to adapt that skill as well and become more open to receiving criticism.
My opinion about the workplace has changed from what it was in the beginning of the semester to now. In the beginning, everything looked so formal and closed off to me. I thought that the formal setting was going to last forever, but I was wrong. Over the couple of months, I realized that everyone is so welcoming and always are ready to hold a conversation. My supervisors are very friendly and are always willing to answers my questions and concerns. On the other hand, the post docs at my lab are always encouraging me learn about their research and experiments. Last week, I was matching up DNA sequence against the reference DNA, and one of the post docs approached me to tell me that he would like to learn more about the technique as he has never performed it by himself. At his reaction and willingness to learn caused me to get excited about my work. I realized I didn't know much when I first started, but I am learning. From my interaction with the post doc, wanting to learn about a simple technique I was performing made me realize that we are always learning and should never be ashamed to ask if we don't know something.
While working with people who have different perspectives and backgrounds than of my own, I believe I was able to expand on my skills of adapting and communicating better. I realized that everyone will think differently and there is no right or wrong as long as one is able to communicate their thoughts to another when working as a team. I advanced more professionally as I adapted and learned that I have to work with others and listen as well when working with a team. With my experience, I learned to communicate better to avoid misunderstanding and conflicts. Being able to communicate openly and properly is what made my experience working with different perspectives better. I was able to learn as I communicated with people who had different ideas as we would bounce ideas back and forth. Because communicational is a transferable skill, I plan to apply to my future career and expand on it more as I interact with more people.
(left to right): Mohamad Obeid, me, and Yashal Butt
Successes and Challenges
Successes and Challenges
A success for me at the lab is to manage my time wisely to make time for my internship. Because I am usually busy during the week, I started going in on Saturdays to make up my work time. I recently finished all of the training for Immunohistochemistry (including image colocalization analysis!!), so I am excited to work on my own more and experience more independence.
The most challenging part was making my schedule work with my supervisor. It was tough at first because I could never complete many hours during the week. However, I communicated with the lab and worked out to come in on Saturdays.
Working on plating with Dr. Singh
A challenge that constantly comes up is being uncertain of what I am supposed to do. I remember I had to make the gel from scratch for gel electrophoresis, and my supervisor had demonstrated it the day before. My supervisor told me the number of samples I had to make the number of gels. He asked me if I needed anything else before he left for sonography (big day!). I felt really confident and said I could do it on my own. I didn't have a formal protocol, but I had taken notes from the last two times. Everything was working out fine, but I realized the buffer concentrations were different in the lab than the one used previously. I didn't know what to use to dilute the buffer. I wasn't even certain if I had to dilute the buffer. I did stress out a little because I was occupying 4 gel plates (which is all the lab has!). I reached out to my former Genetics lab professor to ask him. I had worked with that professor out of the lab for my MURI internship, so I knew I could ask him. He helped me out. Soon after, I saw postdocs in the lab, and I asked them to verify because I didn't want to waste any reagents or equipment that someone else needed. I found out that the buffer was diluted to a factor that I needed, which is why I would take 100 mL of the diluted buffer with no addition of any water. I was able to figure it out and the experimental procedure was performed as it should have been. My direct supervisor returned and verified my work.
Throughout my time at the lab, I always have direct supervisor to answer questions of procedures or verify my math calculations. My supervisor has trained me and expects me to calculate DNA dilution factor; if there are times when I am uncertain about my work, I will ask before proceeding to next steps. When I am looking for solutions around the lab, the other team members and postdocs are always available to help me out. Over time, I have realized that no one at my research site wants me to fail and has given me the space to ask them questions when I am even the slightest bit confused.
From my experience of working in the lab, I learned that I am not perfect and will make mistakes when learning. I tend to remember things better when I previously have had a hard time figuring it out. I tend to remember my mistake and the thought process, which I later apply to things at a later time. I tend to get better at tasks I perform over time with experience and constantly repeating them.
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