Week One

Prior to starting my research fellowship in the Padiath laboratory, I read a few articles on the research they conduct there on leukodystrophies. The main type of leukodystrohpies that are currently being studied in the Padiath lab aise Automsomal Dominant Leukodystrophy, which can affect individuals when they inherit the abnormal gene on a non-sex chromosome from at least one of their parents, rather than both parents as is the case in recessive diseases (NIH, 2016).

Before I was able to start my time in the laboratory, I went through online training that prepared me for different aspects of laboratory safety and research integrity. Laboratory safety is a daily necessity for researchers as there is always some amount of risk involved with chemical and biological materials, including dangers such as fire or disease exposure. Thankfully, there are many different options for protection as well as entire fields dedicated to improving the safety of lab work including green chemistry. In regards to research integrity, researchers in the lab must be sure to keep comprehensive and honest notebooks so their work can be revisited and analyzed. When primary investigators make conclusions from and publish their work, they must also be confident that they are reporting the truth in an unbiased manner, whether the results are what they expected or wanted.

I have now also completed general and small animal training online since the research I am working on uses mice as one of their model organisms. When utilizing animal models, researchers must be aware of the ethical implications of their work and their responsibility to care for and protect the animals from harm. Animals cannot give informed consent that is necessary with human subjects since we have not yet found to a way to verbally communicate with animals, but researchers must afford animal models as many other rights that human subjects receive as possible. As new techniques are developed, animals can experience less discomfort and non-living alternatives can be implemented, including computational methods.

I ride on an elevator everyday to get to the lab itself; as the doors open I immediately see the lab in front of me as it is down the hallway. The lab is part of an open floor plan, which is quite different for me as I am used to each lab having its own room at Chatham. Once I am in the lab, I sit at the benches on the left or right side - there is no wall in front of me and I can see the next few labs that are on the side I am sitting on. Back in the direction of the elevator, there are small rooms that are also part of the Padiath lab, though they are not directly attached to the general lab space. The computers are located in the other direction, against the window that gives a view of some of the University of Pittsburgh's other buildings. When all of the lab personnel are in the main lab space, there are five of us total: lab technician, a graduate student, a postdoctoral fellow, another undergraduate student who goes to the University of Pittsburgh, and me. In the background as I work, I can hear various different sounds including the gentle stir of a Western Blot that is washing, the humming of the 20+ refrigerators that surround the lab spaces, and the almost constant tapping of someone typing on a keyboard.

I have primarily been observing the research in the lab since many of the processes and procedures are new to me. I have run polymerase chain reactions and electrophoresis gels before, but only a few during my laboratory and research courses at Chatham. With my prior experience, the first task I was able to complete under supervision was preparing parts of a polymerase chain reaction and an electrophoresis gel to practice determining genotypes for two of the mice using dissolved DNA from their tails. It never ceases to amaze me how much information is contained in DNA and can be examined through gels.

Figure 1. My representation of a completed electrophoresis gel. 

Every Friday I will be attending a luncheon with all of the CNUP undergraduate summer research fellows and the directors of our program. The luncheons will provide us a chance to catch up, and each will feature a different lecturer presenting their work so we are able to learn about groundbreaking neuroscience research happening at the University of Pittsburgh outside of our mentor's lab. The presentation this week fully reminded me of my passion for mental health research and reminded me again of how honored and humbled I am that I was chosen for this fellowship out of almost 200 applicants. One of the most important points I took from the presentation is that especially with mental diseases and disorders, there is often a pathway of changes in the brain and body that cause the diseases and disorders, and that the direct cause of the symptoms is usually too far along in the pathway to be the best target for treatment. Treating the later systems in the pathway can cause severe side effects as well, which can often deter patients from taking their medication (Grace, 2016).


References:

Grace, A. 2016. Presentation.

[NIH] National Institutes of Health. 2016. Autosomal Dominant. <https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002049.htm>.