Presentation tomorrow!

I've practice my presentation about five times to myself.  I'm not a very good public speaker, considering I don't have a lot of experience in that area, so I'm going to try to practice as much as possible today.  I feel like I'm going to have to speak quickly to make the 8 minute mark . . . in fact I've practiced and averaged about 7 minutes each time.  I just feel like I can't cut anymore information out without cheating the project and leaving the audience hanging.

I'm trying not to be so nervous about the presentation but I still am anyway.  I hope I can connect with the audience like Scott Cochran wants all of us to do.  I think I know what I'm going to wear; I have that at least.

Winding down. But not really.

So today we had our second and last meeting.  Scott Cochran came and talked with us (not to, with!) about good presentation skills.  I am not much of an extrovert, so I'm not naturally good at giving presentations.  Public speaking actually makes my mouth go dry and my heart beat out of my chest.  I did give a presentation on work I did with the GGC last fall, so I wasn't incredibly worried about this presentation because of my prior experience.  But turns out there are a lot of things you can do wrong when giving a presentation.  It was all good advice, but I'm a lot more nervous now, exponentially so.

Before the meeting and earlier in the day, I submitted my paper and sent my presentation to Dr. Schwartz to see what suggestions he had.  He promptly emailed me back, and gave said suggestions.  I am currently waiting on some information from Melanie before I finalize (and practice the living daylights out of) my presentation.  I'm a bit worried about the time limits but I'm going to have to find a way to cram all of my information into the presentation.

Writing away!

Today I worked on my paper again.  I have so many resources for the work I did that it gets confusing sometime to write about the right exon or right mutation.  This is especially true because of the nature of the research.  A lot of times I will have to look at a sequence of something and figure out what exon it's talking about, or try to locate a mutation among hundreds of the same four letters over and over in different combinations . . . A, C, T, G.  Eventually I figure things out.

I wanted to get my paper finalized tonight but I'm not sure it's going to happen since I went to Clemson to support my teammates at their (sort of) first indoor meet of the season.  I haven't been to practice in a really long time because of an injury so I felt it was important for me to come and support them.  I'm considering bringing my computer to the meet tomorrow to work on it in between events.

Well this feels strange.

It feels so very strange to be done with my research!  Of course I still have to do the paper and the presentation, but man, I just wish I could keep going.  I love doing research, the possibility of finding some previously unknown piece of information that could potentially lead to more information is something special.

I drove to the center, bringing back all their supplies that I borrowed.  I arrived a little after 9:00, which is when the weekly lab meeting starts, so I went upstairs and unpacked the things I had brought back.  I had to take a lot of labeling tape off of tubes and dishes and racks and boxes in the process; a lot of what I had borrowed I labeled as property of the GGC so I wouldn't forget it.  After that was finished I got to analyzing the last four sequences.  Since I ran out of ExoSap on Exon 6, I had to load the last 8 samples from that Exon onto the last few sequencing plates.  I also analyzed those.  It was a bit tricky to find those samples among the other 70 samples per each sequencing plate.  I completed the mutations chart for Exons vs. patients on the computer and in the binder for this gene.

I also talked to Melanie about a few details about the gene and the procedure, and then I was ready to leave.  It was sad the last time I left the GGC this past summer, and it was sad this time as well.  I'm going to miss stopping in regularly!  But I've already decided that I'm going to try to come visit everyone there this summer.  I'm really grateful for the opportunities they've given me.

Writing my paper

Today I just started writing my paper.  I feel like it's sooooo late to start, and I hate being rushed, but I've been consumed up until this point with work.  I have to go back to the GGC one more time to analyze my last four sequences and bring back all the supplies I have left over at the Wofford lab.

Anyway, back to my paper.  I went to a coffee shop in Spartanburg, The Coffee Bar, which is a really good place to work.  I saw Alex Hubbard there (shout out) working diligently as well.  He's doing an independent research interim also.  I'm really glad I finally got to start my paper, because I've just felt it hanging over my head.  Since I can sum up my results in an Excel Spreadsheet, I'm going to provide as much background info on the work I'm doing, and the work of the GGC, as possible.  I'm trying to stick to the outline I made, and hope that the paper really reflects how much time I've spent on this project/any findings that I have.  I think the presentation will come fairly easily after I write the paper.  I presented my research from the summer at the end of last semester, so I will probably stick to a format close to that powerpoint since I think it went well.

Last sequences submitted!

Today I was at the center again.  I got my last four plates (exons) ready to be submitted for sequencing.  Not only does this involve getting the Dye-Ex plates ready, loading them with my samples, drying the samples down, resuspending them, and denaturing them, but some paperwork goes along with it.  You have to make a chart of how your plate is loaded, and you have to create a corresponding excel spreadsheet with the sample names.  It's all very specific!  But I have quite gotten the hang of it this interim, certainly moreso than I did this summer.  I think it is because I am acting more independently now in the research (at least the motions) than I was this summer; this of course has to do with the isolation aspect in working at Wofford's lab by myself.  It's a very valuable experience!

I also analyzed four of the sequences, which I submitted yesterday.  I made notes on anything that I found and submitted them to Melanie.  Everything about this gene goes in a binder, and each exon has its own tab.  This is generally how things are organized at the center.  I had a few notebooks that I was keeping up this summer as I worked on a few different genes.  It is especially useful because you can look back on how you carried out a reaction (what temperatures, times, etc.) and see how it turned out.  I've learned the power of keeping good notes because of this practice.

Busy bee

I went to the center today, and it was quite the busy day.  For the first part of the day, I got all of the remaining exons ready to be sequenced up to the BigDyeFast step.  By 3:00 I had submitted four plates of samples for sequencing. Tomorrow I will submit the last four.  I also analyzed four sequences while I was at the center.  This took the last couple of hours that I was at the center.

When analyzing sequences I compare 10-15 of the samples to the regular transcript of the gene, and anything that doesn't match the transcript shows up in red.  Most of the time it's an "ambiguity code" like a Y or a W, and you have to look at the colors of the wave signals to see what the base is.  If it's not an ambiguity code and you see a base change, you still probably need to check the waves to make sure the sample isn't messy looking.

If an SNP is found, I think the next step would be to screen the "normal population" DNA plates.  Hopefully I'm able to locate some sort of mutation within this gene!