Thoughts

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I have had a very busy week!  I gave my internship presentation twice last Monday (it went just fine, nobody asked any terribly hard questions!), packing up my car in between, and drove home to Michigan that evening.  I then spent four very full days at home packing and catching up with friends and family, before flying down to Quito, Ecuador on Saturday!  I am spending the fall semester studying abroad in Quito, and I will be blogging during my time here!  You can follow my new blog here: katetravelsecuador.blogspot.com.

I am very glad Dr. McElroy had me put together a presentation before I left Iowa because it required me to reflect on my entire internship experience.  I have learned SO MUCH this summer!  Before my summer in Iowa City, I had never even performed research in a wet lab.  Now I am comfortable with several lab techniques, I understand the grant writing and submission process, I have put together a research talk, and I know much more about diseases common to premature infants.  Not to mention that I witnessed the first few moments of the lives of about 10 new babies!  I owe a huge thank you to Dr. McElroy for bringing me to the University of Iowa and giving me this opportunity; many researchers would hire an undergrad just to wash the glassware.  I consider myself very lucky to have had this opportunity. 

There are probably many more things I could say about my summer, but the week since I left Iowa feels like a year.  Right now I would rather look forward than back - on to the next adventure!

Two Photons Are Better Than One

I try to stay away from describing the technical aspects of lab work because a lot of what we do is not very interesting and the rest would be very hard to comprehend without two or three years of college bio classes, in large part due to the terminology (one of my bio professors likes to remind us that studying science is like learning another language).  However, yesterday over lunch some of the research assistants from the Moreland  Lab across the hall told me about one of the microscopy techniques they use, and it sounded cool enough that I am going to try to tell you guys about it!  I will try my best to explain things in a way that everyone can get an idea of what I'm saying.  I also should warn you, my knowledge base is very limited, so I don't completely know what I am talking about. ;-)

The majority of techniques that my lab (the McElroy Lab) uses are fairly standard in the research world - many of which I was exposed to in my biology labs at Juniata - like Western blotting, immunohistochemistry, PCR, and RT-PCR (if you don't know what those are, don't worry about it, it probably wouldn't be interesting to you anyway).  The Moreland Lab, which is researching a type of white blood cell called a neutrophil, operates on a much larger scale; Dr. Moreland has gotten two grants of $1 million from the NIH, that should give you an idea of the scale of the lab.  They use the procedures that we do and many more. 

One of the techniques the Moreland lab is using is called "two-photon" microscopy.  This is a special technique that allows scientists to look at living specimens, at a depth of up to 1mm (in the microscopy world this is very thick!).  Basically, two-photon microscopy is an extension of standard fluorescent microscopy - light energy of a specific wavelength is absorbed by molecules which then release the energy in the form of light of a different wavelength ("fluorescence").  The difference is that two-photon microscopy uses light of half the energy (to reduce damage to the specimen, so it can be living) and consequently two photons are needed (rather than one) to excite each fluorescent molecule.  This is a picture of what I just tried to say, for those of you who are familiar with Jablonski Diagrams:

From: Nikon MicroscopyU

You need a special laser to do this because you need a very strong light beam, so not many labs have this technology.  The Moreland lab is using two-photon microscopy to look at neutrophils moving through the bloodstream of a live mouse!  How cool is that?!  To do this, they isolate neutrophils from a blood sample and tag them with fluorescent proteins.  The mouse is put under anesthesia and its foot is glued to the microscope stage.  Then they inject the mouse with a substance to make its veins glow (under the microscope) so that they can easily find the bloodstream.  They inject the tagged neutrophils into the mouse's abdomen, and lead them to the foot by injecting the foot with a "chemoattractant" which causes neutrophils to come to the foot.  Finally, they attempt to excite the fluorescent molecules and observe the neutrophils!  I can't get over this technology; the fact that you can watch a live cell in a live organism using fluorescence is just so amazing!

Although we can't do two-photon microscopy in the McElroy lab, our new microscope can take some pretty cool pictures!  We can do standard confocal microscopy and fluorescent microscopy, here is an example of each:

Small Intestine, 10x

Neutrophils in NEC Intestine, 20x

Making Progress

Today was a busy day in the NICU!  Over the course of the morning we had two new babies brought in from other hospitals, so the residents were busy assessing the new patients and getting them settled in.  We also got to move one baby out of Bay 1 and into Bay 2/3 (Bay 1 is for babies requiring the most intensive care, so moving to Bay 2/3 means the patient is doing well)!  This was especially exciting for me because I had also gotten to see her when she was brought into the NICU during her first few minutes of life.  She was a tiny 650g then and, while she is still small, now she is growing and doing well.  Because I am only in the NICU once a week, I don’t usually get any kind of closure with patients who leave; I come in one day and all I know is they are not in Bay 1 anymore and a new baby is in their place.  It was great to be able to see a patient’s progression from her most fragile on the day she was born, to today when she is strong enough to do well with less care.  We all waved and smiled as the nurses rolled her little bed off down the hallway.

Back in lab, I am wrapping up my projects.  My villus length work is done, and I plan on finishing with my RT-PCR work on Tuesday!  This week I have been working on putting together a presentation on my summer internship experience.  I will be giving the 30-40 minute long talk twice on July 16, my last day here in Iowa City: once at the lab meeting for the labs in our hall, and once to the Neonatology faculty.  I am a little nervous to present to the Neonatologists, as they know so much more than I do about the topics I am presenting.  However, Dr. McElroy has been helping me put the presentation together and will look over everything before I present, so I am not allowing myself to get too anxious about it.  Working on my presentation has made me realize how much I have learned in my time here, and just how little time I have left.  It is hard to believe that I only have 10 more days!  Time flies when you’re having fun!