Week 8

Hey guys!

This week was a big one. After weeks and weeks of searching through what felt like an infinite number of research papers for possible primers to use, I finally started building my machine learning model! It’s still in the very early stages, but just getting to this point already feels like a huge milestone.
These past few weeks have been honestly frustrating—for every hundred or so papers I sifted through, I would probably only find around one or two valid data points for me to use. As I mentioned in previous weeks, my current strategy has been to look for different biomarkers online (I’ve been using COSMIC), input into PrimerBank, and search on Google Scholar. It’s been a slow and extremely laborious process, but I can finally see the finish line! Of course, I anticipate working on this project past the May deadline, but for the symposium, I feel like I’m getting close to something I’ll be proud to share. I’m so excited for my dear readers (yes, you!) to see all the hard work I’ve put into this project.
As for the model, I’ve been working with different algorithms and different features like GC content and secondary structures. It’s been really rewarding being able to apply what I’ve learned when I designed primers in the lab into this tool. For those of you guys who don’t know, I previously worked almost exclusively in the wet lab, which meant that when designing assays, I would physically conduct PCR experiments and validate assays by hand through trial-and-error. Now, working on the dry lab side, it’s been really rewarding being able to apply what I’ve previously learned to potentially help others skip some of that time-intensive work.

Until next time,

Joy