Hannah's Scientific Adventures

So I guess today was my last day of work, and the near end of my summer. The thought makes me a lot sadder than I thought it would.

The end of iGEM, the end of lab work (hopefully only for a little while), the end of times at UCSF, the end of crazy flip videos that people film of others doing stupid things, the end of an oddly recurring theme of waffles, the end of hanging out with friends, the end of watching Mythbusters, Southpark, and Korean dramas during the breaks, the end of talking to the buddies face to face…

It may be sad to end this part of the incredible journey, but at least it went out with a blast.

Around lunch time, there were great performances and a barbecue at the path by the campus’s Subway. Incredible performances by the Zinc Finger which I got a few videos of. ^-^ Yeahhh! And of course there was a dunk tank where people were able to try and dunk the professors and other people who volunteered to be dunked. I got to hang out more with Jesse, Russell, and Lianna.

I also was finally able to get several things accomplished, finally… I finished my biography for our iGEM wiki and was able to discuss the wiki design with Min and Crystal. That only took a few days… And I was able to finish updating my online notebook and wrapped up my physical notebook.

And the biggest upside to today was the fact that I got to spend time with almost everyone (sorry Connor!).

Jesse treated John, Carmen, and me to lunch at a great sandwich place. Such a good Grilled Turkey with Avocado Sandwich and BBQ Brisket Sandwich. Thank you so much again for that Jesse! But it was great because we finally got time to just relax and talk.

Even people came to visit, T. Saw and Andrew Dang, which was fun to talk to them and catch up. I even had fun spending time with Jacinto despite the fact that he shot the Nerf gun at me. Again. >:/ I also got a chance to talk to Min and get to know more about him. And of course the super buddies, who tried to con a lunch out of me. They succeeded, but that’s not the point!

The thing I will miss the most about this wonderful experience would have to be all the great people.

See all of you on November 8th!

So apparently, I have no idea how to re-streak a plate. I have reached this conclusion because I have tried to re-streak my Anti-Meso and Anti-CD19 CAR TOPO vectors two times, and both times I have failed to produce single colonies.

This is a sad, sad thing.

Whoo! Yesterday,  I found out that my ligation finally worked! Although technically it wasn’t the device I had originally set out to make, it was a complete device nonetheless.

So in reality, the Anti-Meso and the Anti-CD19 CAR tubes were switched so I had actually made Anti-CD19 CAR/mDAP10y85F/STOP part rather than the Anti-Meso CAR I had wanted. But it’s all good after John, Jesse, and I ran a diagnostic to determine if the tubes had been really switched.

Great things happened today. I had some chocolate cake, played some Halo, got to eat Korean tacos, and talked to Derek.

Halo is pretty self explanatory, but as for Korean tacos and chocolate cake, it was the lab’s monthly birthday celebration where they celebrate all the birthdays of that current month. It happened to be my buddy, Jesse’s, birthday this month and he told us that there would be Korean tacos. FREE FOOD! ^-^ It was pretty good: spicy mm fa yok, sour cream, fried tofu, and other stuff I didn’t put in my taco. I didn’t know what the meat was at first but after further inspection I realized it was mm fa yok or fatty pork. Awesome stuff.

Since it was techically Sam’s last day, he brought in some chocolate cake to mark the occasion. Thanks Sam.

I had my first Derek-spotting since the beginning of iGEM when he helped teach us and helped with the team challenge. Not only that, I actually got to talked to him. I ran into him in the hallways and we had a short conversation. Whoa! o.O

Today wasn’t too bad. I did some lab work, ate some food, and went to see a movie after work with some friends. A pretty good day in all.

Good luck to you guys who are going back to school, I’ll miss seeing you guys in the lab so often.

I have tried my hand at ligation of Aar1 digests to put together a device. Sadly, so far I have failed. I attempted one ligation and failed. I am on my second ligation.

Currently, I am waiting for sequences to come back. Hopefully, the email will bear some good news because the colony PCR didn’t look too promising.

Here’s to hope.

Boo yah! I may have missed a whole morning of iGEM, BUT I did finally get my license. :]

On top of that very good news, Raquel/Heather/Ray treated us to frozen yogurt/rice pudding. I had mango with my vanilla fro-yo. Thanks guys! It was great :9

Weird thing was though, when we got back to The Cave, Raquel started shooting Jacinto’s Nerf gun at people. I didn’t get hit. XP

Pretty awesome day. Now I just have to figure out the wiki.

The remnants of The Waffle Adventures of Jacinto and Hannah.

Eggos + Vanilla Ice Cream + Whipped Cream = YUM! :]

Jacinto decided to bring in some Eggos today and I just happened to be in the cave at the same time. >:D With that, we were off to an adventure.

After unsuccessfully hunting through several labs for a toaster (and we searched high and low), we decided we could do without the pop of the toaster that told us the waffles were done and settled with a toaster oven in the Lim lab eating area. We successfully toasted two Eggos, and after the consumption of the delicious golden brown waffles (I haven’t had Eggos in ages!), Jacinto had a light blub moment; Waffle Ice Cream Sandwiches.

There was excess ice cream lying around the labs, in both CPL and Lim, so it was a great idea. Now the process of making the sandwich and then actually eating it was another adventure by itself.

The ice cream we were using, which unexpired and relatively safe, had seemed to unfroze and refroze, making it very difficult for us to scoop out the ice cream-y goodness to put on the Eggos. Once completing the task, it was on to the whippped cream and whether to put it inside the sandwich or on the outside. A very difficult decision indeed.

After journeying back into the cave, a total of 10 short steps, our Eggo ice cream sandwich somehow flew out of the plate that held it and few onto the floor (and somewhat on Jacinto himself). o.O The five second rule was our friend. XP (We cleaned off the floor with paper towels! Promise Raquel!!!)

Lots of effort and a few minutes of our time, but that was a pretty awesome ice cream sandwich! :]

Dessert before eating lunch is the way to go.

So for the good news first, I have completed building two of three parts. The BC parts of CTLA-4 and KIR3DL1.  While I had a few problems with CTLA-4, I have finally finished it (excluding glycerol stock). Luckily, my KIR3DL1 part was very smooth sailing (at least one of them was, gosh…). Glycerol stock is finished and in the -80 freezer. :]

Now for the very, very bad news… the CD part CD3z is a failure and a LOT of trouble! >:O SO. NOT. COOL.

It has failed multiple times, and I had recently learned that it may not even be a CD part. Crystal, who is also working on CD3z but the BC part, had sequenced her part and when she aligned the sequences, it turned out to be a CD part. Now, we’re not positive where the mix-up occurred, so I’ve been making parts with her primers and mine. Sadly, mine failed at the first PCR so I have just been continuing with Crystal’s part. It was sent for sequencing and now I just have to wait.

This better be the BC part! >_<

Raquel is on a warpath about not posting on our blogs.

So here’s a post! :]

Apparently the plates that were used to do transformation on the 7th were wrong, so that was a fail… So I re-did it yesterday. And when I arrived this morning to check on my new plates, there were only 1 or 2 cells on each plate…. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

It has been quite a while since my last post and a lot of lab work has happened since then…

We got to work in the lab for the first time last week. It was pretty fun. Just miniprep and PCR, but after weeks and weeks of no lab work, it was AWESOME. I feel like a junkie…. :P Oh wells.

Good thing I actually was craving lab work because it turned out I had to do a lot. When I ran the gel for my PCR, turns out I didn’t have a PCR product so I had to re-do my PCR and wait to do my gel extraction…

Sadly though, the primer templates were wrong and we had to re-do everything, all over again… And we didn’t have enough time to order the primers on time so we had to wait over the long July 4th weekend for our primers. >:o That made us all pretty frustrated…

Also, I think it’s really frustrating when you’re working with six other people in the lab. Too many people, too little space and too little pipettes… Not only did I not have a P-2 or P-20 pipette (because there weren’t enough and my P-20 was broken), but there wasn’t enough bench room because we were all cramped there during gel extraction… >:/ So. Not. Cool… We’ve got to figure out a solution for that…

Yesterday, we were at the lab until 10 p.m. Yes, that’s P.M. Not a.m., P.M. First time I was at UCSF for that long. And I got to work at around 8 a.m. to try and learn how to make the wiki, using html, from my friend. We tried to get everything done, gel extraction, TOPO, and transformation, so we could save a day. I liked it enough… It would have been preferable if we hadn’t had to stay that late but it wasn’t too bad. I got to use the beads for plating! ^-^ That was GREAT!

I was exhausted when I got home though, I just wanted to crash…

Sadly when I got to the lab this morning, I thought that all that work had gone to waste.. I checked on my plates and there was nothing there… o_O Jason did say we should wait a few hours and check our plates again, I’m crossing my fingers…

I have to finish my lab notebook now, so back to work!

What a crazy two days. It was a whirlwind of brainstorms, presentation-prep, presentations, and ideas. We had to come up with ideas of what to do for the project and pitch them to the whole group with the buddies. One thing was for sure, it was scary presenting a topic I wasn’t 99.99% sure about.

We named our teams Team PC and Team Mac because of the computers each team had and we thought calling the teams Team A and Team B was lame. But of course, there was a traitor in each team, Sam and I. He was a PC supporter and I was a Mac supporter.

Well on the first day of the it was just a bunch of ideas that were thrown out, whether it was feasible or not, it didn’t matter. It was kind of a blur. So many things were discussed about, I’m not even really sure what happened.

On the second day of the team challenge we narrowed down our ideas and were assigned a topic. My team got signaling. We then tried to fill in the details about our topic and ideas. That took quite a while. We stayed almost an hour after 5pm again. And we prepped for the presentation.

And today we presented our projects. That was a really nervous event. There were so many buddies and adults in the room. Hopefully, my nerves will get better before the jamboree. But we did get pizza today for lunch, which was great.

I don’t really know what I make of the Team Challenge. It certainly was challenging and used a lot of my brain power, but I don’t really know of any way to improve it or what I didn’t like about it. A lot of it was a blur because I was busy almost all of the time. But it definitely was an interesting time.

Bootcamp has finally ended! It wasn’t as bad as I thought. The assignments weren’t the best thing in the world, but I can say I really appreciated the topics that the lectures covered. There certainly were some complex topics that I did not fully understand, but I think after the team challenge they are all clearer to me now.

The morning lectures were long and sometimes difficult to follow when we had been sitting there for an hour or more. I think it would’ve been a little more productive if we had breaks during the lecture, so we would have a chance to walk around and wake up. I really liked that there were different types of lectures. For example Derek used slides, but David used a more Socratic method/chalk talk, and Reid used a combination of both.

The afternoon assignments were boring, but I usually find homework boring. XD But it was a good way to review and force us to think about it. I liked that Stacy was there to help us with the assignments sometimes, especially when there was a particularly difficult question.

I especially liked learning how to use Gene Designer and ApE. They’re such cool programs. ^-^ We get to make primers with them!

All in all I would have to say bootcamp didn’t kill me, so that itself is a victory.