Kirsty the Scientist

Hi everyone!  Welcome to my blog - daily posts chatting about what it's like to work in a research lab during my 3 month undergraduate dissertation project! With the odd bonus blog thrown in too!  I hope you enjoy joining me on my little research journey and share your own lab and #scicomm experiences in the comments!  Kirsty 👩‍🔬

A friend from our research group told me that I looked really peaceful today! And it was true I had quite a relaxing day, whilst still doing a full day's worth of work! :) It's been a manic couple of days - with quite a lot of things on my plate all at once. But today has been the first day where I've been able to just focus on my lab work, all by myself, with no-one watching or shadowing me, and it was actually really lovely.  Reflecting on February:  I've also realised today is the last day of February, marking a full month of lab work for me and the start of the last month of my project.  via GIPHY via GIPHY via GIPHY This month has flown by, but equally it feels like I have been in the lab for so long (in a good way!) and I've learnt so much whilst I've been here! Now, I've really got to start getting my head down into writing now and think about the final experiments I've like to do to pull my project together and bring my project to a fi

Today was all about taking a step back from all the slightly manic rush to generate data and take a look at everything I've gathered so far, analyse it properly and decide on the next step. So today, I tried to reflect on my results and start to form and build a story from my findings - and remembering to pop into tissue culture to split and feed my cells!  Here's a quick pic of my cells through the eyepiece of the microscope: (not the most graceful way to photograph cells!) 

As I'm starting to head towards the end of my project, I'm trying to work out how I'll string together the results I've gathered into a good story and make each part of my dissertation flow into the next. And plan the last few experiments of the project. Wish me luck - the whole task is starting to feel very daunting! 

Working in a research lab for my dissertation project has definitely changed my perceptions of what working in science and research is actually like. Maybe I've just been part of a good group, but this whole experience has been so much more sociable than I'd expected. Science is quite a collaborative subject so there is always open discussion on what people are working on, but everyone has been so welcoming and inclusive that I've felt like a member of the team from day 1.  But lab life can be really tiring - you need to be on the ball all the time, keeping tabs on everything that's going on and  thinking ahead to the next step. 

As I was talking about earlier this week, I've often been running more than one experiment at the same time during a week. But today, the differences between the two experiments seemed quite striking!  The two experiments are to look for two different indicators to suggest that my protein of interest is involved in making my cell type increase during cell stress/inflammation:  1. Look for the protein itself. This involves separating the proteins using electrophoresis (pulling the proteins through a polyacrylamide gel using an electric current to draw the proteins through the tiny pores of the bell - the smaller proteins get to the bottom of the gel quicker as they can wiggle through the holes faster. Then using a method called Wet Transfer, which pulls the protein out of the gel and onto a PVDF membrane - a technique that uses litres of buffer.  2. Looking for the genes that are expressed - suggesting that the cell is producing the proteins and using the part of the genome th

Today was slightly less manic than yesterday, but I still needed to be just as on top of everything! There can be lots of time gaps between parts of experiments, meaning it can be much more efficient to run two different experiments in parallel - fitting them together so that whilst you're waiting for one experiment, you can be working on another one. Today I needed to time some of these overlaps carefully, and had every ten minutes planned out to make sure not to miss any steps!

Forget everything I've said about being busy so far - today was the most hectic and experiment-filled day I've had yet!  There was a lot to get done today - finishing off longer experiments from last week, plating out cells ready for this week's experiments, data analysis of a couple of different experiments - all on top of a Masters student, who is still shadowing me, following my every move and asking questions about each step. All good multi-tasking practice, and reminding me why each step is important, but I had to be on the ball at all times! 

Normally, I only post new blogs on weekdays, but I've treated you all this week to a bonus weekend post to answer a question that I've kept quite under wraps throughout this blog - what is this project I'm working on actually about?! via GIPHY Well, for a start, there is a reason I have been a little bit elusive on this topic. Technically, the work I do belongs to the university, not me. Therefore officially, the information I gather is not my property to share with the public and the world - and this blog is open for anyone and everyone to read. And as I've said before, my subject area - as you'd expect - is quite niche, meaning this blog could be easily found with a quick google search if I was specific! Although I love how science is such a collaborative subject and sharing research can open your eyes to new angles and opinions on topics - it's not worth the hassle and the sabotage of my degree just to include the specifics of my project on the blog!

This week I have really felt like part of a community. Maybe it's been the number of social events recently, or the fact that I'm now getting to know everyone really well, but it is an absolutely lovely experience to feel like part of this team of researchers at all different stages of their careers and lives. And it makes the workplace such an enjoyable place to be - no matter how much work we're cramming into a day! In other news, I've been getting some really promising results so far (although I'll only be detecting and analysing this week's experiment results next Monday as I was looking at a longer timecourse this week). So I'm actually starting to look forward to writing up some results and discussion on what I've found out so far! As I'm now about halfway through my project, aiming to get some writing done this weekend and next week and to make sure I take some of the pressure off the end of the project! I also got a surprise twitter shout

The institute I'm working in has recently appointed a new director, a lovely Dutch genetics professor. This afternoon, he made everyone's Thursday by inviting us all to an institute-wide social event (at 4pm and with free drinks - it drew quite a crowd!). The event was a low-key way to introduce himself to the new research groups (including my group) and welcome them to the institute, and got everyone chatting about what they were working on and getting to know each other.  When the director joined our conversation, we were talking about careers - about how so many PhD students leave science and some of the pros and cons about working in science and research. And this got everyone talking about how they got where they are now. It's really thought-provoking listening to other people's career stories. I feel like there is a lot of societal pressure on young people in the UK to have career plans all figured out; to have a clear idea of where they are going to impress e

All the days are rolling into one!!  It's been a very busy, but still enjoyable lab week, but all the days have started to roll into the same experience! There's so much going on in each day, with two or three experiments running each week, over several days at once. I love getting so much done and feeling like we're actually getting somewhere.  But this means I've been getting home and collapsing into bed! - and getting behind on blog posts! 

Between parts of experiments today, we had a research meeting to discuss all the results I've gathered so far and explain what I've been up to to both of my supervisors, the research associates looking after me and the new masters student. Which all meant I was asked to present all my results, slightly unprepared, to everyone in the room! Good practice for when I'll have to do an assessed presentation at the end of this module. It was a little bit scary, but all worthwhile. 

This morning was the first day the new MRes students joined our research team - one of which will be directly following and continuing on the findings of my project - leaving me the best person to show him around and teach him the ropes!  Teaching someone else is definitely a very effective test in finding out what you know yourself, especially when some of the work has been new to me too! Luckily, I felt pretty confident in lots of the techniques I've been working on and I enjoyed the chance to teach and discuss my project with someone with a little bit less experience than me (said in the nicest way possible!). It also showed me ho much I have learnt in such a short space of time! 

Today felt like a really productive day, despite all the lab work actually being very repetitive!  Got all the figures from the previous results looking really good today and sent them off to my supervisor to be looked over. And stimulate the cells at multiple timepoints across today, and made up the samples, ready for this week's experiments!  Busy, busy, busy! Definitely, eat, sleep, lab at the moment!

Similar to yesterday, (and most days nowadays!) I was working on two goals:  1. Prep more cells for use for a new experiment for this week.  2. Detect the secondary antibody signals using the Western blots using two slightly different methods (which I can compare to see which is better). Li-Cor detects the signals using fluorescence using a shiny new machine the institute has; whereas ECL is the standard method which uses light.  We also had our first full group meeting today, where the research team gets together and we can discuss the results of everyone's experiments - which will now become a bit more of a regular occurrence! 

Still processing the information gathered from last week's experiments (results collected on Friday). Reprobing the Western blots with more antibody to compare the two proteins we're looking for.  Also learnt how to use an 'alternative Excel' today - called GraphPad Prism, which is a bit better than Excel for producing the lovely good-looking diagrams and graphs ready for publication and to pop in my dissertation.  All in all, these first results make a good start to the project, and has given a few more clues as to the direction this project is going to take over the next couple of weeks. 

This evening I came home and almost instantly fell asleep! It's been a busy week, and a lot of information to take in each day and new things to learn! And today's results were a little anti-climatic, with some contamination in one of the lanes of the western blot, and the PCR results still a bunch of numbers that I'll be compiling into a graph over the weekend before they make much sense! 

Another busy day, preparing the plates of cells to be tested in 2 different experiments - one to search for the protein itself and one looking for the DNA that makes the protein.  On the cusp of finding out the results of a week's worth of work, I was reminded of something I listened to in a podcast today. It was a quote from Richard Feynman, the renowned physicist: "The scientist has a lots of experience with ignorance, doubt and uncertainty., and this experience is of very great importance. When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem they are ignorant, when they have a hunch as to what a result is they are uncertain, and when they are pretty darn sure of the result they are in doubt. Science is a satisfactory philosophy where doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed." "To paraphrase - s cience is the enemy of the certain and being shown to be wrong is an invaluable part of learning about nature." And that's something I will k

Today was the busiest lab day I've had so far! We needed to be back and forth between the tissue culture lab and our normal lab/the office at regular intervals throughout the day to continue the timecourse. I'm stimulating the cells at lots of different times to find out at which point the protein I'm looking for is produced.