Week 7 Blog

Welcome to another blog entry about a week of interning at the NIH! I have continued doing plasmid prep experiments and attending a lot of virtual meetings. I still haven’t received my badge yet, so entering campus is still a process.

As for new stuff, I learned about cell freezing and CRISPR. Last week I learned about cell thawing, and this week on Monday my mentor showed me the reverse of this. I got to learn about the process of treating cells and storing them in liquid nitrogen tanks so they can be stored for long periods of time. On Friday, I got to help with a CRISPR experiment. Another new thing I did was seeing the clinic on Monday morning. The NIH surgery branch (where I am interning) does weekly clinical rounds on Mondays where a clinician explains the details of patients’ cases to the researchers and then lets them talk to the patients. This week, I got to participate in this. Similar to the virtual meetings I attend, the details of the patients’ cases were incredibly scientific and difficult to understand, but also similar to the virtual meetings, I believe the more clinical rounds I attend the more I will understand.

All in all it was another great week of working at the NIH!