The fifth of July! A momentous day if there ever was one. I awoke to the oh so wonderful news that AP scores had been released, and with much trepidation I took a look and collapsed into a fit of relief and exhaustion. Need I mention it was 5 in the morning?
Anyways, fast forward a few (too few) hours of sleep later and we were all back in the lab, celebrating not the start of this nation but the end of two weeks of arduous, frustrating work with our beloved chemostats – equally momentous occasions if you ask any of us who poured our hearts and souls into the project. Still a little tired from last night’s fireworks, we powered through our final gDNA extractions of our antibiotic-resistant bacteria samples with the ferocity of a pack of worn out teenagers.
In all honesty, I’m sure in a few weeks I’ll look back on these halcyon days and miss the hours spent in the lab pipetting and centrifuging but ya know, everything in moderation as they say. And miraculously, most of us were out of the lab by lunch, and we all had a viable sample of Vibrio natriegens (potential superbug? nahh) to send to IU for sequencing!
In the afternoon, we were treated to a phenomenal lecture by Dr. Timothy Yu of Boston Children’s Hospital on his lab’s groundbreaking work on using RNA-modulating antisense oligonucleotides (a mouthful, I know!), to treat rare genetic conditions. It was a great experience to see the practical applications and optimistic future of the field that we are currently studying.
In the end, while for many this day may have had a stressful start, at least for those of us in the SSP Genomics group, it was full of interesting information – and a fitting conclusion to this first stage of our experiment.
About:
Hi! I’m Jasper Zietlow, from Oakland, California. I really like to bake, read, and in general enjoy the great outdoors. If you’re ever in California, go backpacking in the Sierras. It’s 100% worth it!