Lab Diaries #Week1 :)

Hello everyone!

Yes, as you can understand from the title, our winter break has already begun and my lab days,too. :)

Honestly, it wasn't very easy to begin working in the lab because we couldn't meet with my lab professor to talk about my  position in the lab and about who will be the post-doc student that I'll work together, etc. because of the snowy weather!

Actually, I'm really in love with all the winter stuffs like snow, hot chocolate, sitting in front of the fireplace, etc. and I always feel better during these times. However, this time it was both: good and bad! Because, I was worried about my lab attendance!

To be honest, if I weren't in my first year at the university, I wouldn't be so worried about that, but it is obvious that I have no perfect skills to work at any lab(especially in a cancer/ gene regulation lab!) and I really don't know so much about my department,too. As a result, I always thought that what if the professor gives up from taking me to the lab..!

However, lucky me!, something like that didn't happened. In contrast, our professor was very interested about me and he talked about the future ( my future in the lab :D) very brightly! :) So, I'm very glad to say that : FINALLY, it has begun!

First thing I want to say about my first day in the lab is that I really didn't learn much during this semester! There are a lot of different things which I'm not familiar with and have to study for. Honestly, I even didn't know which machine using for what reason etc. Because of that, I took a lot of notes during the experiments and than I rewrite them to memorize what I've learned. After that, I decided to learn and read more about the machines and techniques which we are used during the lab and I'll share the articles that I read with you,too :)

In addition to that, my post-doc student (her name is Nalan and she is kind of a teacher for me too :) ) gave me some advice about what I should read and learn to be able to follow her experiments better. And during my first week I read one of the articles which she suggested to me. Here is the Link of the article : "The Hallmarks of Cancer". And I think that it was very useful to understand some basic structures of cancer! :)

In addition to read articles,of course I learned a lot during the experiments, too. Actually, the names of different enzymes, proteins and their effects etc. all the things that I saw, was completely new for me. Because of that I can make a huge list for what I've learned. However, as a summary maybe I can write some basic stuffs and procedures to see what I got from this experience, after my internship :

• What is PCR and how can it be used? (I'll share a post about the technique, too :) )
• Medium preparing for cell cultures
• Oligo Annealing Protocol and its steps. (Oligo is a desalted custom synthesized DNA)
• Different Buffers and how can they be prepared! (wash buffer, elution buffer, running buffer etc.)
• "DOX" ----> for using over expression
• Transformation - Step by step (with E.coli)
• Transaction - Step by step (with Lenti Virus)
• T4 Ligation
• RNA Isolation - Step by Step

Of course, there can be some other things that I forgot to write but the basic things were these! :)

Next week, we will start some different experiments about her main project and I think those will be more interesting than these! :) I'm very excited! :)

So, see you next week! :)

LOVE YOU <3 :)

Kumsal