On my first day of internship, I was welcomed by this beautiful view. The desk to the left is the desk that I used to study, do some research, and work on the computer. On a normal work day, this would be my mentor Mai's desk, but she was kind enough to let me work here and lay down my things for the month of May.

Before anyone is allowed to work at the lab, each individual is required to do safety training by the UC. The first two days of my internship, I spent completing the two trainings. In order to complete the training, I had to read about safety and then take a test at the end. In order to get the certificate, you had to score above 85%.

In order to give me some background about what Mai's area of expertise was, she assigned me to read a couple pages out of textbooks. It was extremely difficult to go about this because I had not picked up a text book in nearly three years. I had a lot of trouble with the first book, but soon after I started to get the hang of it. I wrote down new vocabulary, questions I had as well as information I retained. Later, Mai checked in with me about what I read and she was able to give me a clearer understanding of what I did not grasp.

On my second day here, I was able to meet the jerboas. I traveled to a secondary facility on the other side of campus in order to feed them, clean their cages and check for pups. I placed hay and cotton in boxed in order for them to make their nests. Along with this, I fed the, lettuce, carrots, sprouts, and seeds!

Along with being the principal investigator, Kim Cooper also teaches at the University of California, San Diego. She invited me to go to her evolutionary biology and ecology class where I was able to sit in on many entry-level lectures. I really loved attending these classes because I felt like I was transitioning into college and it assured my desire to go to college.

I spent quite some time pippetting different volumes of dyed water in order to get comfortable with the tool.

From my time at the lab, I found myself encountering a couple different animals besides the jerboa. I was in the same immediate space as mice and their pups along with chicken eggs. Since the lab is focused on developmental biology, I was able to observe the three animals in the earliest stages of their lives.

This is the multi-channeled image that I took on the microscope of my antibody stains. The three channels are myosin (MF20) in red, membrane outline (WGA) in green, and nuclei (DAPI) in blue.

When we didn't have a machine at the lab, or the UC even, I learned that the lab works with other labs in order to complete their experiment. In the jerboa, the amount of muscle in it's limbs slowly disappear, which makes it hard to collect tissue during their more mature points of life. My mentor worked with the Salk Institute to use a microscope that would cut out the tissue once you outlined it on the computer. The amount of muscle tissue that was collected was about the same size as a grain of salt, but it was enough to draw RNA from.

I learned that antibody stains are not only for tissue, but can be used for bone too! I had the opportunity to help on a different project about bone growth. I learned that it is a lot harder to mount section bone and place it on slides the same way as tissue. In order to have a successful stain, we used glue to stick the bone to the slide. However, when I finished washing the slides in the fifteen distinct liquids, a couple of the slides didn't stay stuck on the slide.

On one day of internship, I had an 8th grader from HTMCV come in and shadow me working at the lab. In all honesty, I did not expect him to be as interested in the work as he was. It was incredibly helpful for me when he came because I had to act like a mentor to him and explain what the lab does. From this, I was able to reassure my knowledge and at this point, I realized that I knew a lot more than I was giving myself credit for.

Here, I was working on creating a paper and slideshow for the antibody stains I had been working on the whole month. This was the first draft of the paper that I created. My final draft, I presented to the lab at our Friday meetings on my last day of internship.

I did a lot of microscopy at the lab and this was the main thing I was looking at. This is what muscle fibers look like through a microscopic lens.

This was the day that Ms. Nuvia came to visit me at my internship.