This week our class got the opportunity to go and visit UCSD (University of California San Diego). When we went we got split into two groups and we each got to visit two laboratories each. I got to see the Salk Institute where they gave us a presentation on astrocytes and I got to think about how my mental health topic (lack of sleep) is impacted by their function in the body. Astrocytes secrete a protein called Chrdl1 that prevents you from being able to retain information but at the same time increases your brain plasticity. My thoughts were that by having an insufficient amount of sleep, one’s body might somehow send a signal to astrocytes to actively secrete this protein. This would take part in the difficulty of learning that adolescents face when not having enough sleep. The second lab I visited was Kauffman Labs. I’m actually doing my internship there so I was very excited to get some insight on what I would be working on during the four weeks of May. They are studying hormones in mice and a certain protein called kisspeptin. Here we got to participate in three different stations, gels, brain slicing and using microscopes. My favorite one was the brain slicing lab, they showed us the equipment they used in order to cut precise slices of a mice’s brain. They gave us a chance to try cutting a brain slice on the machine and placing it on what they called a slide (rectangular piece of glass). Something that I’m still wondering after this week is whether my thoughts on astrocytes and their effect on sleep are true, so my plan is to do some more research on that.
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I’m sitting at home with my parents having some casual conversation until they ask me what I did in school today. The only thing that comes into my head is the odd facial expressions everyone in Biology class made as they chomped on their cheeks. We were doing a science experiment, visualizing our DNA in fact. Biting on our cheeks before swishing a salt solution in our mouth would create more clumps of DNA in our final product. We then spit the salt solution into a cup and poured it into a plastic tube with some soap. Carefully we rocked it back and forth for three long minutes. Then we layered a alcohol based solution on top with a pipette and spun our tube around to see the little strings of our DNA rise into to top solution from the soapy layer below. I can’t help but imagine how silly we must have all looked to the Spanish teacher that walked in while we were doing this experiment. Yet as I think back, I think about how eye-opening this experience was for me. It’s one thing to looks at pictures and draw DNA but seeing it with your own eyes was something else. It helped me realize the scale of how small DNA really is. The chunk we each observed in our test tubes wasn’t just one strand, but hundreds to thousands of strands all clumped together to create this little white string that was barely visible. Something I’m still curious about is exactly how all the DNA strands come together, how they attach themselves to one another.
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About the AuthorBringing the inside scoop to what's going on inside the head of an 11th grader trying to organize a piece of her life, through this blog giving you the details of the Nuvia/Hood-Esparza team at High Tech High Chula Vista. Archives
June 2019
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