Week 1: The Learning Curve

I am an undergraduate intern working in Dr. Brad Tebo's lab and my mentor is Dr. Matthew Jones. During the first week I worked on my literature review and learned how to perform a variety of tests. So far I've used oxidation of leucoberbelin blue to measure MnOx, Amplex red and horse radish peroxidase to measure hydrogen peroxide, and formaldoxime to measure the total amount of manganese in a sample. The goal of my project is to study the interactions between manganese, microbes, and oxygen, and an important part of that is being able to measure manganese and various oxygen species. I've learned a lot in my first week and I'm looking forward to the rest of my internship.