Boston! (under construction) 

I am privileged to have had the opportunity to travel to Boston for 2 weeks during Summer 2024 to attend my in-person lab requirements. Prior to this trip, I had never been on the East Coast, and this was such a wonderful experience in exploring my home campus and bonding with my peers, whom I had only worked with virtually thus far. 

In class, we were introduced to many important isolation methods and techniques for analysis, including gel electrophoresis, PCR, Elisa, Western Blot, HIC Column Chromatography, HPLC, BCA assay, restriction digest, and DNA/protein extractions. We had the opportunity to establish our own prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell cultures. We performed transformation on our E. coli cells, and transfection with our HEK297T cells to introduce foreign DNA tagged with a GFP marker for identification. We performed serial dilutions and stainings with Coomassie and Ponceau, learned how to interpret a chromatogram, we annotated vectors, and identified appropriate primers.

We also learned how to read a UV-Visible light absorption spectrum obtained by means of measuring optical density to determine DNA and protein concentrations.