Week 1 at the Donohue Lab

My first day in the lab, I was the first to arrive. I had somehow overestimated my total travel time by about 30 minutes, even though it was a simple 10 minute bike ride. As a result, I showed up at 9:30 and waited in the hallway until someone showed up at 10, when I was supposed to arrive. Finally an undergraduate student, Lien, arrived and unlocked the door to let me in. She told me that she was a rising sophomore at Duke and that we would be working on the same project together. Since the lab manager who will be helping me this summer was running late due to a doctor’s appointment, Lien began to introduce me to the project. She gave me a paper that Bri, the lab manager, had given to her to read that was a good introduction to our project since it outlined the procedure. Basically in my project, we will be keeping seeds from five different genotypes, some of which were matured in hot conditions and others in cold conditions in different water potentials for 4 days. After 4 days, they will be moved to water and the amount of seeds germinated will be counted. However we aren’t starting this project until another couple of days, so until then, I am busy helping with another experiment. After I finished the paper about my project, I met with Bri, and she told me I could start censusing seeds. This basically means counting how many seeds on a dish have germinated under a microscope. It actually is harder than it sounds because the seeds are really small and often the root that breaks from the seed is clear. As a result it took me a while to get a hang of it, but by lunch I was doing alright.

Plates with dishes that needed to be censused

When I returned from lunch, Bri had to go to a lab meeting, so I continued to census, which gave me an awful headache after a while. Then at 3, Bri came out and told me that me, her, Lien, Tarek (the postdoc), and Dr. Donohue were going to meet to discuss our project. I headed into Dr. Donohue’s office and waited for the meeting to start. Basically we talked about what the point of the project is and what Dr. Donohue wants us to focus on in the next couple of days to prepare for the project. Then we planned what papers we should read and what days we would discuss them. The meeting ended around 3:45. When we came out, we discovered that one plate had yet to be censused. As a result, Bri asked me to finish it. I finished around 4 and then looked around and everyone was beginning to leave. I turned to Lien to ask if we were allowed to leave and she told me we could so I packed up my stuff and headed home for the day.

On my second day, I showed up too early again, but luckily this time Bri was already here so the lab was unlocked. I asked her if I should begin censusing again. She told me that I should and then showed me to the room with all the plates of seeds. She explained to me the system that they used to know which plates had been censused, and which still needed to be done that day. I started by grabbing one plate and initialing that I had done it. By 1, I had censused about 6 or 7 plates, which meant around 180 dishes, each with around 12 seeds on them. But luckily, between me and Lien, we were able to finish all the censusing for that day by lunchtime. As a result, when I returned from lunch, Bri told me and Lien to review some papers since we will be discussing them on Friday. I spent the rest of the day reading and taking notes.

On Wednesday, another group needed help preparing their project, so rather than census seeds, my group helped them. We had to seed, meaning that we had to put 20 seeds on Petri dishes filled with agar in a 5 by 4 grid. The seeds were extremely small, making the work quite tedious. However, it gave me the opportunity to talk and get to know people from the lab who I normally don’t work with.

Then after lunch, we finished seeding, so I began to set up for my project. This meant cutting and counting 1200 strips of filter paper that the seeds were going to rest on in the dish.

On Thursday in the morning we did more censusing and then I finished cutting and counting the strips of filter paper. After this, I reviewed a paper that we were going to discuss together on Friday. When I returned from lunch, I cut and poked holes in weigh boats for my experiment so that they would fit in dishes where the seeds were going to grow.

Censusing in the field

On Friday, I had to come to the lab an hour early because we were going to go look at the field experiments which are about a 15 minute drive from the campus. There were three different experiments that were taking place. However 2 of them were finished for the summer because seeds were no longer germinating due to the heat; they had entered secondary dormancy. One of the experiments was still going on though so we censused the seeds that had begun to bolt and marked them down on a sheet of paper. It was surprisingly tiring and by the end of the morning my knees were sore from crouching to count seeds. However, it was cool to be able to see the lab’s field experiments, even if they were all overgrown. After lunch I censused some seeds in the lab and then discussed a really confusing paper that pertains to my project. Walking into the discussion, I was nervous that I wouldn’t know anything. However, once it started, I soon realized that I actually did understand most of the paper, and that it was ok if I didn’t understand everything. This reassured me, and by the end of the meeting, I was active in the discussion and actually enjoying myself. 

Overgrown field with weather station in middle
that records weather conditions of the field

This first week has been long, and sometimes tedious with all the censusing and seeding. However, the people in the lab that I work with have been really welcoming and have so far made this experience really fun, even though I was nervous and apprehensive walking in. I’m now excited to get to know everyone better and working on my project in the upcoming weeks.