This summer I'm working at Penn in the Linksvayer Lab, which is focused on evolutionary biology through animal behavior and genetics in ants. At first my work was set back a week by a full safety class. But on June 10th I took the safety class, and after long commute by car, then train, then walking, (about 100 minutes in total, half train, and split evenly between car and walking) I started Tuesday June 11th. Although the lab focuses on animal behavior, because of my past experience in performing PCR (thank you Dr. Peretz and BioTech class!), I am starting off by comparing micro-satellites (points on the genome which we expect to change) in the different colonies of Monomorium pharaonis, called Pharaoh Ants. To do this, we (Me and Riley, the grad-student working with me), are taking 15 ants per colony, for about 15 total colonies, and going through the process of separating each ant, crushing them using a pestle and liquid nitrogen, applying many buffers and Elution, and going through tons of centrifuging. This is what I have been doing for the past week. Starting this afternoon I will begin applying 4 different marker sets to identify the ants, performing PCR, and getting each ant sequenced. For those of you doing the math: its 15 ants x 15 colonies x 4 marker sets = about 900 ants micro-satellite sequences!!!
The most amazing thing about the my experience so far is that this project is MY project! Riley has some of his own stuff, and works with me often, but the project is mine to do and complete, and the info is going to be used for future projects. I should be done this by the end of next week, and then I really start working with everyone on a BIG animal behavior project (which I'll keep a secret for now!). But once that project is finished, I'll be able to compare my results from the micro-satellite to make a final determination about the results from that project, tying in most of the work I'll be doing during my 8 weeks.
There is one more EXTREMELY awesome thing about my experience here. While Dr. Linksvayer's lab is amazing, and I'm becoming friends with the other 8 or so people working here, I have the added bonus of working with another lab! Riley has until the end of the summer to decide between Dr. Linksvayer's and Dr. Berger's lab, so in the mean time we work in both. Dr. Shelley Berger focuses still on ants, but specifically epigenetics. Dr. Berger has a lab of about 35 people, and works in the very high tech Smilow research center, still at Penn. Riley is working on completely different projects at Dr. Berger's lab, and I've gotten to help him over there when we have some time in the afternoon. There I've been able to use really high tech machines, like a Sonic Crusher, which they use to crush ant samples WITH SOUND instead of using a pestle. I've also been able to attend lab meetings, talks by visiting experts, and hopefully next week I'll be doing an ant brain dissection, which has absolutely nothing to do with my work, but everything to do with Riley's.
Not only am I getting great lab experience through my work, but I'm getting to see the work of dozens of other researchers, who are glad to tell me (and brag) about their research. I also get to compare the feeling of a huge and older high tech with a small and newer lab. I can't wait to continue my work and eventually move onto animal behavior, and I'll keep everyone posted with how it goes!
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