Hello all! My name is Sandy Lastor (a.k.a San). I am an uprising junior at Bay Path University in Longmeadow Massachusetts. I, along with many of my colleagues, am majoring in biotechnology. I cannot express how extremely grateful I am to have the chance to travel across the country to be a part of such a wonderful program, such as the 2021 NSF REU summer program. This summer I am a part of Dennis Kolosov's lab, where fun becomes an understatement! My six weeks being here has been such a blast. I have been able to learn new skills I never pictured myself working towards. I have met such beautiful souls that will forever mark a special place in my heart. In the lab more specifically, we are studying the epithelial physiology of caterpillars. I am inspecting the caterpillars means of secretion (i.e urination.) A great comparison would be the human kidney. This helps us learn about the organism and how much of a pest problem caterpillars really are to the economy. Caterpillars cost the U.S.A the equivalent to Argentina's yearly income in crop infestation (470 billion.) Our goal in short would be to decrease crop infestation and how we can reach our goal. In order to study the kidney of said caterpillars, multiple rounds of troubleshooting has taken place. This week my partner and I have been dissecting multiple caterpillars in order to increase our speed to produce results in a more rapid fashion (more caterpillar tubules, more results.) With that in mind, our use for the dissection is to separate the cells into principle cells and secondary cells in order to see what exactly we are dealing with. Elastase is used as an enzyme to separate the tubules into their designated groups (principle/secondary.) Later, a percoll density gradient is used to separate principle cells from secondary cells. In addition to the separation, staining is used to differential viable cells from dead cells as well as principle from secondary. Outside of the lab, tons of fun activities take place as well! I would like to say my lab and I go to the beach habitually and eat yummy foods during the week! Being here for the time I have been here I have learned so much about the west coast! I also had the chance to visit the San Diego Safari and explore all kinds of animal habitats! Carlsbad State Beach San Diego Safari Yummy foods! Lab work I cannot express how fortunate I am to work in a brilliant lab and be a part of an amazing cohort of scientists! This summer is definitely one to remember.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
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
Categories |