Finally Able to Swim Again.

The third week of the internship was the week everything clicked; I was finally able to swim again.

Now that I was using the right hand for pipetting (which happens to be my right hand) the lab work went more smoothly. Though now I had to get acclimated to the shift in placement of everything. When working in the lab, a major key to have a successful experiment (this is something you will not learn from DJ Khaled) is to minimize contamination as much as humanly possible. And I say humanly possible because nobody is perfect. Ways to do this is by not using the same pipette for two different cell lines; not using the pipette if it touches something that is not considered sterile;  not passing the pipette over lids or open bottles; and many more procedures that will only really benefit you to know if you work in a lab so I won't bore you.

In addition to being one step closer to being a pipetting "master", I finally truly understood the goal of the projects. Not that I did not understand before, I did. I just had not my "aha" moment. The first couple weeks were like my first time in the ocean; constantly getting caught in wave after wave and having no idea how to prevent it from happening again. This week, though, the lightbulbs went off. I understood the purpose of each experiment, the significance of the projects, what the expected outcome, and how to complete the lab work.

Also, on the Friday February 25th, I was introduced to a new experiment- the REDI-Dx Assay (CLPA Assay). This is a genetic analysis test. We completed this for the DU145 cell lines and analyzed approximately 20 genes.