Week 1.

24 June 2016

The first week of the internship involved meeting my senior mentors, Joe Needoba and Tanya Peterson, and my frontline mentor, Stuart Dyer, along with other members of the lab. They are all enthusiastic scientists, and I am sure I will learn a tremendous amount of information from each one of them. The project I will be working on with the help of Stuart is, Exploring the role of cyanotoxins as effector molecules in cyanobacterial metabolism and stress response, with an emphasis on environmental factors that contribute to cyanotoxin production in harmful algal blooms. I have spent most of my time this week trying to orient myself on the project at hand by reading publications that are similar to, or that have relevant information that I will need to know for full comprehension of my project. Having little background knowledge on cyanobacteria, I find it extremely fascinating how such a small organism can have such a impact globally.  Currently, we are working on a procedure that will detect BMAA through the use of TCA. Hopefully by the end of the day we will have our results. I enjoyed my first week. I am looking forward to the next.

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