Bi-Monthly Journal
This is a bi-monthly updated blog tracking Chase's progress throughout the completion of his project.
Summary- Fellows Project ProgressThe first half of August was jam packed with fellows work for me, since it was the first part of the summer that I was 100% home and able to consistently work on my project. I made 2 major types of progress for my project, as well as 2 management-side developments. The first main category of project-specific progress was my extensive note taking on more articles, which included the note taking itself as well as answering the initial questions I wrote to myself while reading the articles. The second project specific part of my progress was my outlining of the SLR. With the goal of the summer being that I have some sort of preliminary rough draft of my SLR drafted by the start of school, making an outline was a very important step in this process. Outside of project-specific developments, I also had some general management tasks that I took care of. The first and most straight forward was continuing communication with my project mentors. I had a period of silence with my mentors when I was focused on grinding out research and did not contact them much, so I made a conscious effort to send more emails in this phase of the project. I also worked on the website more, trying my best to beautify some of the pages and picking a theme I will implement across all of the pages as time goes on. (more on this below) As mentioned above, the first major stride in project work for this update was the increase in note taking on research articles. I have amassed a list of well over 20 separate research articles that have been focuses in my research the past couple of months. They range from larger, more general articles such as the first few that I found back in early July, to specific research papers focused on synthesizing one type of hemoglobin or one specific step in the chemical pathway to synthesizing important molecules such as Heme (which is the small, organic compound that containes the iron making hemoglobin into a metaloprotein). I have been taking notes on these articles, and while I have read to some degree every paper I have found, I have taken notes on the first ~10 give or take. Part of the process is making connections between articles, so often times I will read a paper, find something really interesting or important in it, and then find another seperate paper that helps me to explore interesting thing x in greater detail. I end up taking notes on interesting thing x and note it as being from the first article, but some of the notes I take on interesting thing x are supplemented from my newfound knowledge developed in that second article. I have pictures of some of the notes I have taken thus far below, to better display my method. The second major development that is project focused in my work has been my work on making an outline for the preliminary SLR. At this point, I have created a pretty decent outline of what I want the SLR to look like. A lot of the formatting will change when I decide on a journal or journals(s) to submit the SLR to later this fall. However, the general structure of how I want to introduce ideas will stay the same. There is a screenshot of my outline below, but the general format will be a 4 stage paper:
Summary- Actual Scientific UnderstandingWhile I do not want to take up an entire blog post writing paragraphs upon paragraphs of my newfound understanding of scientific concepts, I did want to write a short summary on some of the things I have been learning related to the research in my project. I have found that overwhelmingly, the majority research on Hemoglobin synthesis has been done using microbial synthesis. In other words, microorganisms produce Hemoglobin. This is fascinating to me because it opens the door for an increased consideration on sustainability, a focus I have wanted to incorporate since the beginning. I actually did some in lab practice with these sorts of methods this past spring when I did some expiriments using CRISPR, the gene editing tool that has been making headlines recently. I am thinking, based on my understanding of the current research surrounding Hemoglobin synthesis, that this might be the way to go: levying the recent advances in microbial synthesis to essentially force bacteria to overproduce hemoglobin, which I can then harvest. This is super exciting and will help me make a SOP (Standard of Practice) for this winters in-lab research. Pictures- Notes from Articles & PapersBelow are some examples of notes I have taken on research papers. Notes in orange are small notes to self, whether it be a reminder to look up a concept, a note that the thing above is important, or any other kind of important note I want to find later. Picture- SLR OutlineBelow is a picture of my current outline for my SLR. I will continue to work on this, as well as use it as a guide for writing my preliminary SLR in the coming days. Picture- Various CommunicationsBelow are some screenshots of some communications between me and my mentors. These are here just to show my typical email communications. Picture- ResourcesOne of the resources I have been using recently to help in my research is RCSB.org, a nonprofit website dedicated to categorizing and cataloguing every protein out there. I was turned onto the website years ago by MIT's head of the MIT.NANO electron microscope department after I visited during MIT.NANO's grand opening in Boston. They have a wonderful database of proteins, including tons of information (way more than I even need!) and 3D models of the molecules I am researching. The website has been instrumental in my understanding of the 3D structure of Hemoglobin, including its 4 subunits and the differences/similarities between the 4, so I figured I would include a screenshot of the UI. (see below) Picture- Updated Website + Future PlansI have begun in my free time working on my website. I spent a while on my "About Us" page filing in some information like my summary, as well as making a nice looking scheme. While I don't love using typical pictures as a background, I like how the background I have chosen for the "About Us" page contrasts with the white text nicely. I will continue to implement this theme across the whole website as it grows. I also plan to reach out to Mr. DeMarte, Mr. Witzel, Dr. O'Donnell, and Ms. Carsley and request that they each write a very brief summary of themselves and their role in my project, so I can add it to the "Who Are We? page. Reflecting on Difficulties Regarding TravelWhile I have been keeping up with my fellows work, this summer has been very unstable for me because I have been constantly traveling. Training with the USNA sailing coach this summer, every week I was traveling to a different state across the country. I traveled to Newport, Rochester, New Jersey, and everywhere in-between, so I was always on the road at a different hotel. WIFI has not always been stable or even available, and this was especially the case in St. Croix during the end of July. While I originally made an entirely separate post for the middle to end of July, I tried to post it at the small camp on the south end of St. Croix where we were staying, which is very underdeveloped. The WIFI was spotty to say the least, and ultimately the post never went through. While this blog posts encompasses all of my work from late July as well as the significant strides I have made in the past few weeks, I learned an important lesson to always double check the work I submit. Researching a complicated topic while constantly traveling has not always been easy this summer, but it has been extremely rewarding. Not only for the actual work I am getting done, but also for the experience. Looking ForwardLooking forward, the main deliverable to complete is the preliminary SLR. At this point, I have done enough research that I can begin to write the SLR. My summer Fellows deliverable was to create essentially a rough draft of my SLR, and I will be getting into the nitty gritty of writing said SLR in the coming days.
As soon as I have a rough draft of the SLR completed, and have done editing myself, I will turn to my mentors for help. I am planning to reach out to them as soon as I have a rough draft, so hopefully the first few weeks of school I will be editing my SLR with them and by the end of September I want to have a decent draft of my SLR finalized. From there, it is a matter of formatting it for various journals and adding/subtracting information in order to conform to their requirements. I hope to submit my SLR for publication this fall. After completing the SLR, I will move it and all of the various small tasks I have to do during the publication process to the back burner while I focus on developing an SOP, or Standard of Practice, for my "In-Lab Research." I want to have my SOP done by the end of November, so I can begin getting resources for my experiments throughout December. I hope to start the actual in lab research before or if not, soon after the mid year fellows review in early January.
1 Comment
|