Zachary Larson, Borlaug Summer Intern, is on location at Nanjing Agricultural University and providing us with updates this summer of his trip. Here’s his latest. You can also find a photo album he’s got started here: Borlaug Summer Intern Photo Album. The internship is being sponsored by the Iowa State University Plant Sciences Institute.
My lab work here in the wheat lab has been a bit of a trial and error experience, but I take this as an experience every person who wants to get involved in a research setting must undergo before they can actually conduct a research task proficiently.
For the last few weeks I have been solely working on helping my friend Wang Jia do his lab work, and understand his research. He is trying to detect the genetic differences between a variety of wheat, and a species of grass that shows a serious resistance against a variety of wheat disease. To do this, he first has to run hundreds of PCRs and Page Gels in order to get enough data to find the genetic differences.
The methodology is simple, but the actual work involved in running the experiments turns out to be quite difficult, and I have been using the last few weeks just to get used to running PCR tests and constructing page gels. I have had a whole week of gels either ruined by improper construction, or the result of said gel turned out to be meaningless. But, my results have slowly gotten better, and as I have improved my own lab techniques I will be able to set out and run a good portion of my friend’s gels before I leave.
As far as lab life goes, it ranges daily from tedious to very exciting. As I have arrived at the very end of the semester, there has been plenty of time for outside excitement for those who will soon graduate from their doctoral or master’s programs. Beyond the graduation party (which was very fun), I have had the opportunity to see some of these students in the last few weeks, and I am incredibly impressed with their work ethic, intelligence, and the ability to always be cheerful despite the work conditions with in the lab. I guess this is to expect from graduate and doctoral students, but nevertheless I am quite pleased.
As it is already early July, time is quickly passing, but I have another three weeks left in Nanjing that should allow me plenty of time to get more lab work done, see several good friends, and continue to discover a little bit that is the craziness of research here.