This month has been pretty busy with university applications and tests, but I’ve tried to make as much progress as I can regardless. One of my philosophies with handling multiple responsibilities is to look at your life like a company; you can prioritize different aspects of it for a certain amount of time, but you can’t fully neglect any part of it. That’s why my goal this month was still to make some tangible progress on my work.
This October, I started setting up my lab, attended the Gairdner Awards, and got selected to speak at Web Summit!
Quote of the Month:
“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings” - Salvador Dali
Project Update
To prepare for my experiments with the sequences I want to test, I’m going to be running a control assay while I’m still designing my final list of samples. This is to speed up the process, so I can setup my pipeline and resolve any issues before I work with my recombinant polymerases.
To this end, I’ve started ordering my first pieces of equipment and reagents! So far, I’ve bought:
A miniPCR mini-8 thermocycler and -86°C freezer
Some PCR reagents (Q5 DNA polymerase, dNTPs, PCR tubes, etc.)
Micropipettes and tips
Next month will be focused on running a trial of my methodology with Q5 DNA polymerase. I’ll make sure to share some pictures so stay tuned!
As for the sequences themselves, I’ve started to generate several thousands of samples (~10,000) and applied my preliminary filters. Around 40% of these sequences fit the requirements of this stage, which means they have a high likelihood of being functional. These sequences will move on to my next filter, which will focus much more in depth at the structural and chemical level of the protein.
The Gairdner Awards
Last October, I talked about attending the Gairdner Awards, where I got some of my first exposure to world-class research. Looking back, I am also proud to say I’ve met some Nobel Prize winners (Demis Hassabis and John Jumper)!
This year, I was invited again to attend the conference. It was nice to see how much I’ve grown over the past year, as I was able to completely understand what the scientists were presenting about. One of the topics even directly tied to my project with DNA polymerases: next generation sequencing (NGS). This technology, developed by Drs. Balasubramanian, Klenerman, and Mayer was revolutionary in creating an era of hyper-efficient DNA sequencing.
Huge thank you to the Gairdner foundation for hosting this event, I was able to get a lot of great insights about how science isn’t always straightforward, and how the biggest discoveries can come out of just exploratory research.
Web Summit
I haven’t announced much about this yet, but I’m going to be speaking at Web Summit this year! I haven’t got my full schedule yet, but I will be speaking about my project, hosting a roundtable on the future of biological discoveries, and more! I’m really excited for this and will provide an update next month.
Some pictures so far:
Cool Reads
David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein design
Science releases positive preliminary results for their vision restoration clinical trial
Bacteria can create genes from non-coding RNA to create toxic proteins for defence against phages
Thanks for reading and excited to share what happens in November! Also, happy Halloween 🎃