Yale Plates, Scoring, Scavenger Hunts, OH MY!!!

Hello flog!

Out here at the College of Wooster, we have continued to be busy as bees. Seed Master Ren’s seed children are growing up – we have now planted over 80 seeds! Though most of the seeds in this batch we expected to germinate have already, our next batch of seeds will switch over from winter to summer next week, so we should have a lot more soon!

Our plant babies are growing up!!

Mia and Miyauna tag-teamed it today, starting off by running a gel on DNA isolated on Monday and some of the PCRs that have been run so far. Things came out looking pretty good! They then ran some more PCRs (I was on temporary leave as president of PCR) and prepared what is called a mix plate which will be sent off to Yale for genotyping analysis.

I basically did not step into the lab the entire day. Instead, I was helping out and learning how to do data analysis on the results we get back from Yale. For samples of an older project, I was helping to “score” the results and essentially ensure that the data were organized properly so that they can be analyzed without issue in R. So I suppose while the president of PCR was on leave, the excel expert was in the office.

As we wrapped things up for the day, we had an unexpected surprise. We share our gorgeous new science building with many other people, including other lab groups, summer camps, and freshmen orientation sessions. This week, a science camp for middle school girls represents one of our neighbors in Williams Hall. On an end of the day stockroom run, we were accosted by a group of these campers, running down the hallway. Apparently, they were on a scavenger hunt, and they asked if they could ask us some questions. They were a mix of science-related questions and Wooster-related questions, ranging from the most bountiful class of organisms on this campus to the name of our football stadium. One question they were tripped up on was where to find dihydrogen monoxide, which I think all of us got a kick out of. By the end of the scavenger hunt, they probably knew more about our campus than we did. Regardless, it was cheering to see how excited these young girls were about STEM as the next generation of scientists!

Until next time,

Avery