Week 8 Blog

Hey guys! Welcome to another blog entry. It’s hard to believe that there are only two more weeks left for my internship. Time really flew by. This week I helped with transfection and organoid analysis experiments. I also learned some alternative cell freezing techniques. I attended one virtual meeting that was similar to the other ones I’ve been doing.

Something completely new I did was attend a poster presentation symposium. These are only held a few times a year so it was a particularly unique opportunity. They are open to any NIH worker as well as to the general public (although there are not a lot of visitors from the general public). Many NIH departments hosted sessions at this symposium and I attended the one for the National Cancer Institute. At first glance the content on the posters about research projects people had done seemed just as complicated as the content covered in the virtual meetings I regularly attend, but each poster was presented by someone who gave detailed, comprehensive rundowns of their posters and were happy to answer questions along the way. The presenters also talked about their jobs, so the symposium was a great opportunity to not only learn about cancer research projects going on at the NIH, but also to learn about NIH job opportunities.

CRISPR came up in the presentations and I mentioned doing a CRISPR experiment last week, so I thought I’d talk some more about that. I found it really cool that I got to do an experiment with it as it is a recent development and has been in the news lately. My internship mentor talked about how revolutionary the development is and how many people at the NIH still haven’t yet used it considering how new it is. It is revolutionary because it allows tiny parts of a genetic sequence to be edited. My mentor and I discussed the fact that there are many ethical issues. It could be dangerous as well as unnecessary to use for frivolous purposes such as changing someone’s eye color, but also offer technology to cure many genetic disorders.

As I’ve continued to work on my paper, I’ve realized how my internship experience has helped me see why many common cancer misconceptions are incorrect. For instance, a common misconception is that cancer research is fruitless because there is no cure in sight. I am seeing first hand that there is a lot of cancer research going on. Through clinical rounds, I see how much research and discussion really goes into each individual patient. I also talked to some of the NIH workers about the common misconception that everyday objects cause cancer and they say that this is because people read and hear things without considering what context it is said in and that in a job like cancer research, context is super important.

To close, I should note that I probably am not going to get an NIH badge. I did my fingerprint testing, but since badging takes a long time, it is possible that they didn’t prioritize creating a badge for me as I was only going to be on campus for a month. If anyone reading this is considering getting a short job at the NIH, perhaps consider not applying for a badge. The lines might be annoying (mainly if you arrive at 7-8), but it won’t be too big of a hassle. And an NIH job is definitely worth it!

Thanks for reading.