Hello from August! My name is Teresa Cajina and I am a rising senior at the University of Rochester based in Rochester, NY. I’m a declared Biochemistry major with a Certificate in Biotechnology looking forward to applying to graduate school after the end of the REU program. I grew up in a small town in New Jersey which is 5 minutes away from New York City, making me somewhat bias to the East Coast life. That being said, this program gave me the chance to visit California for the first time and there’s no other way I would’ve wanted to experience Southern California without this wholesome cohort and mentors! This week I had the opportunity to discover the Thursday night market at Oceanside (with my roommate Janelle) and adventure around Los Angeles (with Janelle and Gracie)! The first is a hands-down must for all newcomers since its accessible by the Sprinter (the light rail that has a station right next to the CSUSM University Village Apartments which is where we live during the program) and a ride only costs $2.50! Something I learned about California is that not having a car can be a major limitation in doing activities and trying out new places to eat so I highly recommend taking advantage of the Sprinter to visit Vista and Oceanside. If you do go to LA I recommend going to Porto’s bakery in Glendale first for morning breakfast since they have papa rellenas (potato balls), guava pastries and many more small eats for all taste buds priced A DOLLAR EACH! Yes, a dollar! After Porto’s my favorite spot was the Sanrio Village in Little Tokyo because it was the cutest area for the best photos and had some amazing independent-artist vendors nearby selling art, stationery, clothes and more! It is also where I had some of the best bread from Okayama Kobo bakery. Sadly, the trip was not so great at the end because the Amtrak train back to San Diego was delay by two hours due to a ‘trespasser strike’ in Anaheim so it took 5 hours in total to return to the dorms ;( Back to the research, I am currently working in the Dr. Luna lab focusing on microscopy and cell morphology of spheroids comprised of breast cancer and preadipocyte fat cells. Established in the literature, preadipocyte cells have been shown to transition between mesenchymal and epithelial states with no distinctive reasoning as to why and in the presence of breast cancer have been alluded to possibly altering the invasive properties of cancer. The lab works with both brown and white preadipocyte fat lines to observe any differences in cancer behavior. I specifically focus on the cell culture of maintaining these spheroids at different seeding densities and imaging them under 24-hour timelapses. Recently, I’ve done immunostaining with KI67 antibodies to measure proliferation within these spheroids as another means of finding factors that may influence cell structure and communication. We have two cancer lines in the lab currently called MDA-MD-231-ECADH-GFP and MCF-7-GFP which allow us to explore cancer that is not only triple negative but also fluoresce the e-cadherin protein emphasizing increased cell-cell membrane communication. I’ve had an incredible experience developing the project under Dr. Luna’s guidance that the lab was able to integrate Python programming to measure cell count and fluorescence intensity in the images making data analysis more efficient! I hope all readers have the chance to participate in a research program like the one offered at CSUSM as you’ll leave completely enriched with new friends, experiences, and life lessons!
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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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