Chandran Laboratory Week 1: Dawn in Morningside Hights

So unlike my peers, who are mostly finishing up their lab work, I have only just begun my work at the Chandran Laboratory at Columbia University, working with a graduate student studying ammonia oxidizing bacteria and nitrous oxide and nitric oxide emissions.

 My new role as a commuter began when I was dropped off at the PATH station, gearing up for what I assumed to be a 2 hour commute to upper Manhattan. To my delight, everything went much faster than expected. I arrived and with only minimal trouble, found the correct building, and met my mentor, Medini, who is a first year graduate student and whose research I'm helping with. My PI, Dr. Chandran, was doing "field research" with another graduate student, and I would soon learn that he is often out of the office and very busy (although we did get a chance to meet to talk about the lab goals).

The first few days I passed the time observing Medini and her pure-culture batch reactor. Thus far all that she had been doing is observing the cell growth and troubleshooting reactor problems. The machinery is pretty cool, with the tub full of the media and cells connected via all these tubs to a fancy machine that regulates everything and shows all the things happening for you, except cell growth and product formation, which would be our job to track. Basically, her work involves Nitrosonomas eutropha, which is an ammonia oxidizing bacteria vital in nitrification, which is the change of ammonia into nitrate (via a few intermediate steps). Because the batch is a pure culture, meaning that no other bacteria are growing in it, this means that every piece of equipment and everything around it has to be extremely sterilized. Right off the bat, in order to retrieve a sample from the reactor, Medini had to use a Bunsen burner to switch out the tubing. Until my safety training, I could only observe, take notes, and hopefully absorb some skills.

Friday came quickly, and just in time for a new cycle of cell growth to begin. We had to make new media and autoclave many things and will soon be inoculating the reactor. While the cells grow in the reactor, we will be first observing their batch growth curve, which will involve lots of cell counting. Then we will be looking at product formation, in this case nitrite, using a spectrophotometer. Once the cell population stabilizes, then the real experimentation can begin.

 Fortunately, the heat wave is subsiding and I am particularly grateful seeing as I'd have to walk through the heat in my lab-appropriate long pants and cardigans. Today I met another high school student who is beginning a two year stint in the lab for INTEL and other lab research work, so it's good to see a familiar unsure face. The rest of the lab is graduate students and post-doc's from all over the world. According to Medini, it's one of the most diverse group of people around. From China to Brazil to New Jersey, the lab guarantees a lot of learning experience.