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The Fifth Week – On Stupidity

Everyone who does research is stupid, and we must accept this. We are all equally clueless about the problem being unraveled because it is all completely original information; never been looked about before. At the beginning of this internship we all received an article entitled “The Importance of Stupidity in scientific research” that really articulates this point well. (I’ve attached it to this blog entry too.)
 
However, I am especially stupid in this laboratory setting since I have so little background in microbiology and all of the things I’ve been dealing with. But that’s why it is such an amazing experience for me. I am almost always the least knowledgeable in the room about the topics at hand, which gives me the most opportunity to learn about it! This positive outlook really allows me to try to make the most of my time here and learn as much as possible, and realize that it’s okay to be stupid sometimes.
 
I thought about writing my blog last week about how important it is to be stupid and writing about some of the mistakes I made last week as examples. However, I thought of a different idea to write about and put it off until this week, knowing that I would continue to do plenty of stupid things to write about. And I didn’t disappoint. This was a short week, only 3 days for me because of the long fourth of July weekend, but that wasn’t a problem at all, I have felt stupid several times during these past three days.  And that’s what I’ll be telling you about in this blog.
 
This week Kati and I performed a new test using a fancy machine from another lab group. It was an ICP test, something to do with plasma, and it can measure the concentration of metals. We used it to measure the concentration of intracellular manganese in a sample of KG127 and KG4 each grown with MnCl2. This was another instance when I felt ignorant this week and had to ask what exactly intracellular manganese was. I had a general idea that it was the manganese taken up by the cell or oxidized by the cell or something, but I decided it was still important that I ask. It really is important to ask dumb questions to make sure you understand what is going on, especially in very new situations. So we tested our samples of different dilutions and our hypothesis was that the KG4 sample would have a higher concentration than the KG127. However, something must have gone wrong with our dilutions because one dilution showed KG127 having twice as much and the other showed KG4 having just a fraction more. We might do it again, but it isn’t a high priority.
 
Another test we continued was the heat shock test. The results from the initial test we did Wednesday made it look like there might be a possible connection between oxidation and resistance to heat over time. So I performed the test again but with KG4 and KG127 with and without MnCl2. We all make silly mistakes that make us feel stupid, and during preparation for this experiment I made one of those mistakes. I began to spread lawns of the bacteria on plates that I had just moments before labeled as separate sections to streak bacteria. This required me to start over and use new plates. More plates to pour. I also put some of the heat-shocked culture on the wrong plate, however I did realize before streaking it out and made note of my mistake. These types of mistakes can be quite frustrating sometimes and really make me feel inexperienced, but I know that it is all part of the learning process and that everyone has felt stupid like this at one time or another. The results from the repeated heat shock showed that the oxidizing and non-oxidizing survived about the same during the heat shock, so it seems that we will give up on manganese oxidation as a protective mechanism against heat.
 
However, we are still testing out more things with manganese oxidation as a protective mechanism against UV radiation. On Wednesday, Roberto mentioned that there is a solar simulator in the lab upstairs that we might consider using to try to kill our bacteria since it would be sunlight they would experience in the environment and not 254 nm wavelength UVC light. So we went up to talk to the people upstairs in that lab and another intern showed us how to operate the solar simulator and told us we could use it that afternoon if we wanted. So we started thinking about how to test using the simulator. We decided to look up approximately how long it takes to disinfect water in direct sunlight and use that as a guide. It turns out it takes 6-8 hours… and we didn’t want to use the machine for that long. So we decided to do a shorter time course of 1, 2, and 3 hours. I was going to do it on a single plate, but made another silly mistake and ended up plating 4 plates of the same bacteria… so we just decided to do it with multiple plates. Right before we went upstairs we were talking to Rick, who didn’t believe the UV rays killed the bacteria, he just thought the sun cooked them to death and that the solar simulator would do the same. So, we found a temperature probe to put under the simulator and track temperature throughout the experiment. Turns out Rick was right. After the three hour time course all of the plates were thoroughly fried and the temperature had reached a maximum of 62°C. Kati and I were sadly mistaken when we thought the solar simulator would kill the bacteria using only UV light, but a mistake to learn from of course. We decided to move back to individual testing type experiments and test against UVA and UVB light of wavelengths 365 and 302 nm respectively. We have had different results from these tests, possibly another mistake on my part operating the light box… so we will repeat it again.
 
A lot of these experiments I have been doing require strict time management and it has definitely been a challenge to do them all accurately. I’ve made several mistakes during them, but I’m learning how to plan out my time better and better. Another challenge I had this week was preparing my presentation on my research so far for the “mid-term” presentation with the other undergraduate interns. I really enjoyed preparing my presentation and, for once, I didn’t feel quite so stupid after all. I really enjoyed trying to put it into a language that anyone could understand, because five weeks ago I would have been that anyone with no background in Pseudomonas putida GB1 and their oxidizing ability. It was even fun to give the presentation and especially nice to listen to all the other interns’ projects. It is amazing how different all of our projects are.

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