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Dang Lam is running an agarose gel in his quest for LG5’s centromeric marker
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Scholar's Journal
My primary residence this summer was in the Life Sciences Addition, a remarkable building with green-tinted glass windows located between the Valley Life Sciences building and the mysterious eucalyptus grove. My summer experience somewhat defied the stereotypical picture of the solitary, monotonous life of a science undergraduate researcher. I feel fortunate to be in a lab full of fun, motivated, and smart undergrads as well as being guided by two motivating, down-to-earth postdoctoral fellows, Tim and Mustafa. There are currently four undergrads (Catherine, Phil, Neha, and myself) working in the mapping project, and this has created a fun and interactive environment within the confines of the “undergrad bench.”
Getting back to research, the main objective of my summer was to create resources for the cloning phase of my project, namely, finding centromeric markers. There are 10 chromosomes in Xenopus tropicalis and, therefore, 10 centromeres. Our current goal is to find satellite markers that are closely linked to these centromeres, and we can do this by measuring their meiotic recombination frequency using PCR. Now I have learned that this is not as easy as it sounds, but I guess this is true for all science projects. During the course of the summer, I encountered quite a few obstacles, but I was able to figure out solutions with the help of my postdocs. So definitely don’t worry and start doubting yourself (like I did many times) if you run into problems when doing your project. Just to give you an example, one day my PCR stopped working all of a sudden. When I looked at the gel results, I couldn’t see any band whatsoever. After a series of test experiments, we found out that the DNAs we’d been using were either contaminated or too low in concentration. So we collected new DNAs from the frogs’ eggs and toe clippings (just little cartilaginous tips of their toes, which would also grow back). The DNAs were now working, but that still didn’t solve my PCR problem. Then with his Sherlock Holmes-like abilities, Tim suggested that the problem might lie in the PCR program I was using. More specifically, the annealing temperature (at which the primers start binding complementarily to the DNA) was too close to the melting temperature of most of my primers. After reducing it from 58_C to 54_C, my PCR started working like a charm.
The summer went by quickly, but through failures I can finally taste success (or at least, results!). I have learned and matured considerably from doing research; I have also grown to appreciate the laborious (but rewarding) creation of knowledge.
