Quick Summary
Week two started with a trip to the botanical gardens of Mount Makiling. The flora and fauna were amazing and being surrounded by nature was very relaxing. One of the most interesting things studying biology has done is notice how different forests are in different climates, something I would be oblivious to before. When we went to the gardens we definitely were not prepared for the dense forest hike we ended up doing which was quite difficult, or at least I thought so. The sounds of cicadas overwhelmed the forest and were deafening at times. As we walked through the dense flora we saw butterflies fly by that were the size of small birds and insects that you can see in the picture section of the blog. Every once and a while the cicadas would pause allowing us to hear the birds calling in the trees. The workweek was full of activities. I feel like I am starting to truly get into a rhythm in lab which now that I say I will most likely have a major mess up tomorrow. We also attended the 6-month progress meeting where the labs in our group discussed what they were working on and the different labs gave feedback on the work. The weekend was full of activities that I will be sure to talk about in the social section.
Social Aspect
My lab has been very very welcoming and the whole lab treats each other like family which makes work that much more enjoyable. every couple of hours I will be sitting at my lab bench working and I’ll hear “Sam Coffee” which is one of my colleagues making sure I have my caffeine fix and plenty of snacks throughout the day. Let me emphasize the never-ending flow of snacks. Me and one of my lab mates, AJ, have become very close friends and whenever the IWU interns go out AJ is right along with us. He is from Mindanao, the southernmost main island of the Philippines. I have made many other friends along the way whether that be interns or someone else I encounter. A big group of interns and some visiting scientists went to Villa Escudero, an old coconut farm that is now home to a museum and other activities to educate visitors on traditional Filipino life. One of the activities consisted of eating a lunch filled with traditional Filipino dishes at the foot of a waterfall which was an interesting experience, to say the least. After returning back to IRRI, a group made up of interns from different master’s and undergraduate programs went out to a local bar where the owner had the same welcoming energy as everyone else we came across.
Research
This week was full of long days in the lab which I really am enjoying. I am about a third of the way done with validating my markers via PCR and gels. The first gel I ran during the week felt perfect and I thought it was going to be a perfect amplification which It would have been if I remembered to add the ladder. I also had my first marker not amplify after running it twice and next week I will add some GC buffer to the PCR mix which hopefully will prevent self-annealing of the amplified region, a relatively easy issue to fix if that is what is causing it. If that does not work I will have to play around with the PCR temperatures which will truly be a slightly more educated approach than guessing and checking (this will also require me to run only one marker at a time instead of six so I am really hoping the GC buffer will do the trick). that about sums up the research aspect of the week, it was a lot of PCRs and Gels but I definitely have been adjusting my protocols to try and make the process more efficient.
Photos
