Hello! My name is Haven Johansen (they/them/theirs). I am a rising senior at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA (go Vikings), where I study Biology and am creating a second major in Reproductive Health. I am thrilled to be part of the 2021 REU Summer Scholar cohort at CSUSM. I’m writing to you from the Becket Lab, which is a microbial genomics/ecology lab focused on the spread of antibiotic resistance (AR) in coastal microbiomes. Most of my time is spent assisting Ciara Sanders -- a graduate student in our lab -- with her thesis, which examines the rate of horizontal gene transfer of AR elements in coastal microbiomes in response to variables that will shift with the changing climate. My fellow REU labmate Lakme and I collect, filter, and bullet (preserve) seawater samples three times a week; Ciara uses these bullets in an assay she is working on, and later Lakme and I will use some of the bullets to establish community profiles of our samples through 16s rRNA sequencing. We hope that these samples, in addition to the metadata we collect each sampling day, will create a useful baseline for Ciara and for future projects in the Becket Lab; because the coastal microbiome is so complex and variable, it is helpful to ground experiments by getting to know the communities we're working with and the conditions that surround them. This week we sampled and filtered our seawater, collected metadata, helped Ciara with her assay, delved into the bioinformatics platform we’ll use to analyze our samples, learned to isolate DNA using a DNA/RNA miniprep kit, learned to use the lab’s Qubit, and plated and cultured E. coli in an antibiotic to compare growth between two stocks and to practice sterile lab techniques. The lab’s new sequencer was delivered and its arrival was met with much fanfare. We also attended several excellent lectures and observed other protocols performed in the lab. I’ve learned that by staying observant, asking lots of questions, and carrying a notebook everywhere, I absorb a huge amount of new information in the lab every day. I feel incredibly lucky to be surrounded by so many experts and up-and-coming scientists in this field who are passionate about their work and ingest (nearly) as much coffee on a daily basis as I do. This week was also full of post-lab mischief. We hiked Double Peak, toured White Labs, stopped by the farmer’s market, and skated at Balboa Park. This has been an excellent experience and I look forward to our remaining six weeks in the program. I love science!
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Watch this space for weekly updates!Every week, one of our CSUSM NSF REU students will post their blurb, summarizing their week, and chronicling our program. AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2023
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