So, tell me about your research.

[45408]

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I just thought it'd be interesting to read what other SDNers are doing with their research time. Tell us what you do, and give the straight dope.

EDIT - a few of you guys are missing the point. What do you DO? Are you in charge of rinsing out petri dishes, cleaning the tables or what?


I've been in a neuroscience research lab for the past 18 months. It's exclusively undergrads at this point. I'm the project manager, and I'm currently working on learning the software that we use to analyze functional neuroimages. I'm also responsible for writing an experiment in a virtual environment that will take you from point A to B to C to D in a circuitous manner, and then find out if you can get back to A in the most direct manner. This is looking for hippocampal dependence in learning. Right now, I'm thinking of using the original Doom for this, because it has a really straight-forward map editor.

 

[Sparky Man]

My research is in chemical physics. We study how charge is injected and tranported in organic materials using variable temperature electric force microscopy. Not much bio in what we do...

 

[melimi]

i get rats and mice drunk and high and then look at their brains

 

[ERJunkie]

Manipulate gonadal hormones in rhesus monkeys and watch for sexual initiation.

 

[Uegis]

Differential expression analysis of pancreatic tumor biopsy samples. Microarrays are amazing and have/will revolutionize biology of all fields.

 

[kyriacos01]

Clinical validation & product development re:

I. Lymphoid & myeloid leukocyte enrichment specific to BMT recipients; i.e., VNTR chymerism analysis recipient vs. donor PCR providing proactive management of patient engraftment.

II. Direct and indirect erythrocyte expression of IgA surface antigens mediating Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia; i.e., specific to Coombs negative AHA patients.

III. CD59 Detection of Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria; i.e., immunophenotyping vis-à-vis flow cytometry analysis.


All the best,
-ky

 

[maddscientist]

I am tracking the lineage of the Hemangioblast in vivo using single cell labeling experiments in zebrafish. This is my fourth year of graduate school, so by the time I get my PhD I will have 8 years of research experience and at least 4 publications. Why med school? Have you ever spent more than 4 hours alone in a room completely devoid of light working on an experiment that may or may not work that your professor may or may not care about?

 

[BlueMagpie]

Determine the roles of cysteinyl leukotriene receptors types 1&2 in inflammatory diesease, specifically sinusitis.

 

[Scarletbegonias]

I'm doing psychological research on human spirituality and long term mate preferences. My hypothesis is that being spiritual or religious is an important characteristic to those selecting long term mates. This was inspired by the recent Time article "The God Gene." I'm trying to help answer the question: how does being spiritual (the article says that it is an adaptive trait) benefit humans? As a mate preference spirituality may be more of a luxury than a necessity. That is, it may not be as important as things like financial status, attractiveness, kindness, but after a minimum threshold for those characteristics are reached, spirituality may be a factor in choosing a mate.

 

[Floseph]

i get rats and mice drunk and high and then look at their brains

HA! Me too, well, I just get them high. I'm doing stem cell research on Parkinson's disease. We lesion one side of their brain to give them a model of PD, then to test the model we give them amphetamines- which makes them run in circles (my boss has a video of rats rotating to Swan Lake). Then we give them stem cells in an attempt to fix the functional defecit. I think it's bomb.

 

[PTPoeny]

I spent two and a half years correlating fluorescence data to electronic data on the electronic substructures of Argon.

Even less bio than Sparky Man 🙂

 

[Electrophys]

I'm doing work in electrophysiology, investigating how and why arrhythmias arise in cardiac tissue.

Hence the name 🙂 Dorky, huh?

 

[AnotherDork]

I am involved in a longitudinal epidemiological study on the mating preferences of young adult females in the Northeastern United States. After several years of observing and interacting with countless study participants in their natural habitats, I can conclude with confidence (p< 0.00001) that their mating preferences do NOT include AnotherDork. These data are highly significant and correlative with other such studies undertaken by my colleagues, who often perform this research with me in several on-site locations during the evening hours.

As a follow-up, we altered the subjects' brain chemistry by purchasing (legal) depressants at said locations. Interestingly, we discovered that administration of such depressants did not change the subjects' mating preferences.

 

[G0S2]

Used microarrays to analyze the gene expression profiles downstream of TNF-alpha/NF-kB signaling. I identified a novel mitochondrial protein that induces apoptosis by binding to and inhibiting Bcl-2 thereby reducing its survival activity. Expression of my protein in cells leads to cytochrome c release from the mitochondria and enhanced sensitivity to genotoxic compounds (chemo).

 

[EvoDevo]

Used microarrays to analyze the gene expression profiles downstream of TNF-alpha/NF-kB signaling. I identified a novel mitochondrial protein that induces apoptosis by binding to and inhibiting Bcl-2 thereby reducing its survival activity. Expression of my protein in cells leads to cytochrome c release from the mitochondria and enhanced sensitivity to genotoxic compounds (chemo).

See? This is what I'm talking about! 🙂 What was the protein? You can PM me if you want.

[/excited]

 

[melimi]

I am involved in a longitudinal epidemiological study on the mating preferences of young adult females in the Northeastern United States. After several years of observing and interacting with countless study participants in their natural habitats, I can conclude with confidence (p< 0.00001) that their mating preferences do NOT include AnotherDork. These data are highly significant and correlative with other such studies undertaken by my colleagues, who often perform this research with me in several on-site locations during the evening hours.

As a follow-up, we altered the subjects' brain chemistry by purchasing (legal) depressants at said locations. Interestingly, we discovered that administration of such depressants did not change the subjects' mating preferences.

hahahahahaaaaaaa
i think i've participated in studies like that a couple of times, without my informed consent tho

 

[Larsitron]

I'm a bioethics researcher looking at the ethical protections in place to keep gene banking participants from being harmed.

 

[Thundrstorm]

Harvesting neural stem cells from mouse embyros, and determining the effect of different growth factors on growth rate and differentiation (via immunofluoresence). If I don't run out of time before graduation, we'll be transplanting radiolabeled cells into adult mouse brains (wt and those with lesions modeling Parkinson's).

 

[GATORade]

My team and I are currently using echocardiography to compare the stresses in the left ventricle during aerobic and anaerobic exercise in cardiac patients. I just hope it'll be ready for publication by the start of classes in the fall.

 

[g3pro]

My team and I are currently using echocardiography to compare the stresses in the left ventricle during aerobic and anaerobic exercise in cardiac patients. I just hope it'll be ready for publication by the start of classes in the fall.

Whoa, nice! I've been involved for a short while in trying new ways of calculating cardiac output in patients without valvular regurgitation. Interesting stuff.

Are you an undergraduate?

 

[GATORade]

Whoa, nice! I've been involved for a short while in trying new ways of calculating cardiac output in patients without valvular regurgitation. Interesting stuff.

Are you an undergraduate?

I actually graduated in 2002. I've been working as a physiologist in cardiac rehab since. Every Friday I donate my time in the cardiopulmonary lab in order to get my hands-on some clinical research.

 

[Avenue Q]

I'm looking at what a newly discovered protein (Copine) does (specifically in dyctistillium cells). We think it has something to do with cell trafficing, but beyond that have no clue. so yeah, i do a lot of really random experiments. our lab just made a knock out, so now we can compare the mutant to wild type and over expressed cells.

i was away last semester, and thats when the mutant was made, so i have no pre-conceptions about what things should look like since i haven't been looking at them for months. basically i have become the test subject - blindly looking at unlabled slides and making conclusions without those preconceptions. it's kinda fun.

previously i was looking at the role of the protein in phagocytosis, and identifying its cellular location.

oh, and the other day we did an awsome stain that looked way cool! it made me happy in a weird way.

 

[45408]

I am involved in a longitudinal epidemiological study on the mating preferences of young adult females in the Northeastern United States. After several years of observing and interacting with countless study participants in their natural habitats, I can conclude with confidence (p< 0.00001) that their mating preferences do NOT include AnotherDork. These data are highly significant and correlative with other such studies undertaken by my colleagues, who often perform this research with me in several on-site locations during the evening hours.

As a follow-up, we altered the subjects' brain chemistry by purchasing (legal) depressants at said locations. Interestingly, we discovered that administration of such depressants did not change the subjects' mating preferences.

some of you guys are just spewing out big words without saying what you actually do in a day.

 

[Amorphisgirl]

I am involved in a longitudinal epidemiological study on the mating preferences of young adult females in the Northeastern United States. After several years of observing and interacting with countless study participants in their natural habitats, I can conclude with confidence (p< 0.00001) that their mating preferences do NOT include AnotherDork. These data are highly significant and correlative with other such studies undertaken by my colleagues, who often perform this research with me in several on-site locations during the evening hours.

As a follow-up, we altered the subjects' brain chemistry by purchasing (legal) depressants at said locations. Interestingly, we discovered that administration of such depressants did not change the subjects' mating preferences.

Best post ever! Another day, another dork

 

[AnotherDork]

Best post ever! Another day, another dork

Wow! Best post ever! Thanks Amorphisgirl! Maybe the best post ever will help me with my research...

 

[QofQuimica]

I'm finishing my PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry, which in my case has basically involved straight organic synthesis up to this point. (I may get to try my hand at peptide synthesis at one point before I finish up here.) I have two projects, both of which are working on developing leads for anti-cancer compounds that will work by alternative mechanisms instead of interfering with cell division (if they work, that is!). Ideally that will result in fewer side effects than with current chemo regimens; after all, there are lots of good cells that divide frequently too, like epithelial cells.

Typical day: well, Prowler, that part isn't quite as glamorous or exciting, which is why no one wants to talk about it. I'm the senior grad student in the lab (meaning, I've been in grad school the longest and I'm ostensibly the most experienced. The being here the longest is definitely true; I'm getting to the point now where I'm almost a decade older than the new grad students, never mind the undergrads. 🙄 ) On an average day, I set up reactions, run columns, mentor the new grad students (YOU try getting your work done with five new people all asking you a zillion questions all day long 🙄 ), and surf SDN while I'm rotovapping my compounds. I do extractions several times per week in a sep funnel, just like you did in your undergrad organic lab, and I do a ton of TLCs to follow the progress of my reactions and columns. I also do a lot of NMR experiments, mostly PMR and CMR, but occasionally some DEPT and 2D experiments. Today I did a potassium permanganate oxidation of a toluene derivative to a benzoic acid, and it worked nicely, so I'm a happy chemist. 😛

 

[Thundrstorm]

EDIT - a few of you guys are missing the point. What do you DO? Are you in charge of rinsing out petri dishes, cleaning the tables or what?

Dissection, lots of cell culture (please God, don't make me count any more cells on a hemocytometer), immunofluorescence, and just now learning how to do perfusions to continue immunohistochemistry on brain slices.

Okay, so for stem cell harvest, my duties go like this:

Breed mice "harem" style (tee hee), 4 females + 1 male, turn down the lights and let the magic happen.

The next morning, probe mouse vaginas for plugs (exciting, right?)

2 weeks later, sacrifice the pregnant mice, dissect out the embryos, and then dissect the embryo brains and keep a particular region. Dissociate the cells through a series of syringes, put them in growth media in culture flasks...and then proceed with various experiments.

Today, I'm just doing immunofluorescent staining. Apply solution; chill for an hour or 2... apply antibody; chill for an hour or 2... rinse, repeat. 😀

My PI seems to have realized that I'm competent, so I have to do every step of the process, which is great except that I now have no life. hmmm...Someone tell me why I volunteered to come in on Saturday.

 

[relema]

I am working on complemeting a mutant of Borrelia burgdorferi that we made as a knockout for the protein DbpA( this mutant can not infect mice and therfore not cause lyme disease). The hope is once we get an established complement that is producing this protein that we can re-establish infectivity in mice and show that this protein in needed for B burgorferi to cause Lyme disease( after I do much cloning ,transformation and mouse infections).

I am also doing alot of chemiluminescence on a another low expressing protein. My time includes way to many westerns,protein columns and pcr reactions lately 🙂

 

[PostalWookie]

I cloned a motor protein from Aplysia sea slugs and showed that it's required for synaptic plasticity. 3 years of my life.....

What that means is that I killed hundreds of these expensive slugs ($40 a pop), got inked dozens of times, and basically did all the fun stuff associated with cloning, like a hundred minipreps at one time.

 

[Shredder]

I print microarrays for my lab and several others, and it's a pain. It takes a lot of troubleshooting and labor, but I get paid for it. I would rather not get paid and use them for doing research, but as the only undergrad in the lab I have been too tied up with typical undergrad grunt work to do any research in my several months there. Once I get proficient enough to balance everything, I hope to use them to study gene expression under various conditions in yeast, and perhaps move on to humans later. I at least want to talk about it all in my apps and interviews, since I believe microarrays have applications in medicine that I would like to help realize. It's good to see some other people using them--how do you obtain the arrays?

 

[jscarpachio]

i get rats and mice drunk and high and then look at their brains

How'd you get that job?

 

[logos]

I pipet. Repeatedly. Usually about a box and a half of tips in one sitting. Specifically I do time courses where I take samples from different tubes every few min (to the second), I then use these to derive some kinetic constants that we can use to examine the mechanism of the enzyme. Its a relatively new area in enzymology called pre-steady state kinetics. I also run a lot sequencing gels (single nucleotide resolution) to analyze my time courses. Good stuff, in that you can gain a lot of information very quickly. I've been in the lab for ~1year and I should have a major part in at least three papers before this summer.

 

[melimi]

How'd you get that job?

i applied to like 30 research tech jobs before finding the perfect one at the dept of pharmacology at BUMC
everything else was major bench research (booooooring)
i was a great candidate for the job cuz of my bio+psych/neuro double major
i actually know an undergrad who does the same research at the BU undergrad campus, in the cognitive science dept
ive got a feeling they give coke to rats at every college and med school campus

 

[45408]

Geez, Thundrstorm, I thought that they treated Hester Prynn pretty rough for getting pregnant outside of marriage, but you guys are brutal to these mice!



For the rest of you guys in strict bio labs - do you like doing this stuff? I can't imagine doing any of that stuff voluntarily. My course labs are bad enough - there's no way I'd go back for more.

 

[Shredder]

Hmm Chillingsworth was awesome. I would hate having to kill and torture poor furry animals, I prefer cells and molecules.

 

[Thundrstorm]

Geez, Thundrstorm, I thought that they treated Hester Prynn pretty rough for getting pregnant outside of marriage, but you guys are brutal to these mice!



For the rest of you guys in strict bio labs - do you like doing this stuff? I can't imagine doing any of that stuff voluntarily. My course labs are bad enough - there's no way I'd go back for more.

Yeah, my family calls me the mouse abortionist. Makes me cringe; I prefer the title mouse gynecologist. Last week, someone came in the lab (at my college) while I was euthanizing a mouse and compared me to Hitler. I was like, dude, they're MICE and besides, it's not like I'm doing it for kicks. My sisters told my 6-year-old niece that I kill baby mice and suck out their brains, so I had to try to explain the importance of the research to her so she wouldn't think I was evil ("So, Auntie Jessie only kills the mice because she wants to help people. Do you know what Parkinson's disease is? No? Okay, so, see how my hand is shaking....." and so on. Fun conversation. 🙄 ).

 

[pratik7]

we are studying autoantibody levels/reactivity and how they change with age. We are publishing a paper on how increases in autoantibody levels may play a role in vaccines becoming less effective as we age.

 

[infinite_dreams]

I just thought it'd be interesting to read what other SDNers are doing with their research time. Tell us what you do, and give the straight dope.

EDIT - a few of you guys are missing the point. What do you DO? Are you in charge of rinsing out petri dishes, cleaning the tables or what?


I've been in a neuroscience research lab for the past 18 months. It's exclusively undergrads at this point. I'm the project manager, and I'm currently working on learning the software that we use to analyze functional neuroimages. I'm also responsible for writing an experiment in a virtual environment that will take you from point A to B to C to D in a circuitous manner, and then find out if you can get back to A in the most direct manner. This is looking for hippocampal dependence in learning. Right now, I'm thinking of using the original Doom for this, because it has a really straight-forward map editor.

I am also doing my research in a neuroscience lab; my particular duty is to use a computer program to turn fMRI images into a analyzable form. We compare brain activation and hemodynamic response to audio-visual emotional stimuli in typically developing controls and individuals with AUtism Spectrum Disorders. It is very interesting and the software is really powerful; it allows us to compile 3-d images of the brain and map the functional image to teh anatomical of the brain. We can then travel through the brain one voxel at a time (1mm cubed) in any plabe or rotational angle and identify neural pathways and/or specific anatomical structures with acivation differences. I was interested in what you do in particular in your neuroscience lab? and what software you use? We use Brain Voyager 2000 (Goebbel, 2000) which is specifically designed for fMRI data.

 

[45408]

I was interested in what you do in particular in your neuroscience lab? and what software you use? We use Brain Voyager 2000 (Goebbel, 2000) which is specifically designed for fMRI data.

We use AFNI, which is free, as opposed to Brain Voyager, which costs an arm and a leg. AFNI is Linux-based and command-line driven, so the learning curve is very steep. It does all the stuff that BV2K does, I believe. Right now though, I'm working on a 3D CAD environment for a virtual maze, and I also made all the stimuli for a transitive inference task.

 

[byeh2004]

for me, I just started... I am doing research on molecular analysis of CNS inflammation and neurodegeneration.

 

[dave613]

Doing research on manipulated gingkolide compounds to determine potential beneficial effect on alzheimer stricken hippocampal cells.

...Involves lots of western blots, and irritating dissections. Usually do some of both for a few hours each day i'm in. 👍

 

[byeh2004]

what exactly are blots, im reading the journals my RI gave me and they are talking northern blots which i have no idea (being that i start my research next week)

 

[logos]

Blots are when you run macro molecules through a gel to seperate the different sized compenents then "blot" the seperated components onto a piece of filter paper. From there you can do a ton of things with the filter paper to find out where what you are interested in ran on the gel. ie hybridize with a radiolabled probe or apply an antibody, which can be detected by various means.

Southern = do this with DNA, named after the inventors last name
Northern = RNA, named as a joke
Western = protein

These are usually pretty easy to do, but time consuming and kinda boring. You can find tons of protocols online or in any lab manual (eg "The Big Red Book" aka The Stony Brook Harbor Manual, Molecular Cloning etc.)