My Next Rotation
I’m excited to be starting my next rotation on Monday! I just found out today that my next lab is one that studies quiescence, which is basically how cells in our body “hibernate” until they need to wake up to do something. In high school biology, you might have learned about mitosis, where cells copy DNA, separate out the chromosomes, and divide to create two new cells. Well, cells aren’t always constantly dividing, and there’s a specific “hibernation” state (called quiescence) that cells go into when they aren’t needed. Fibroblasts hibernate until you get cut, at which point they start responding to the wound by dividing and turning on genes that help with healing. I’m very excited, as I’ve never worked with mammalian cells or tissue culture before. It’ll be an experience, and hopefully really productive!
I really enjoyed my last rotation, which was in a yeast cell biology lab. I did a lot of microscopy to find out some mechanisms by which yeast cells have sex. I don’t want to get into the specifics too much, but basically no one knows how the specific mechanisms of yeast sex happens, especially how the two cells fuse together to become one cell. It was a really great project to start with this year, as it involved some very basic biological techniques, it wasn’t too hard, and I was able to start generating data right away while working on other side projects that were harder and riskier.
So overall, am I happy in graduate school? Yes, I think so. I’m learning a lot, which I always find awesome, I’m discovering new stuff, which is neat, and there’s something quite satisfying with the bench work in biology.
