Lab Training
Great! Now that I have your attention, you should continue and read about my work with a different kind of lab: the science lab.
In my lab, I am supposed to be present from 8 am to 5:30 pm, Monday through Friday, with a 2 hour break for lunch and a rest from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. One would think that these hours would be grueling for a high school student — who is typically in school from 8 am to 2:30 pm — but it is not. In fact, it is not enough time. You see, science and scientific experiments never follow a schedule; you cannot allocate certain hours and days when you work and when you don’t work. Science never stops. For this reason, on many occasions, I have found myself working outside these required hours — not because I have to, but because I want to.
For example, last week I had to sow 150 different lines of rice in glass bottles and fill them with soil and 200 mls of purified water at 5.8 pH. I had many more steps left in this experiment, however, I decided to stop around 11:55 pm making sure I left a 5 minute window for me to gather my things and sprint to the international dorm before Shu Shu (the nickname of the man who runs the dorm) locks the doors for the night. It’s funny actually, Shu Shu puts a big lock around the two door handles as if he were trying to keep out some kind of monster. One time, me and my roommate from Pakistan, Adeel, had a late dinner and arrived back to the dorm at 12:30 am. We had to knock on the door and wait for 15 minutes before Shu Shu came with his big ring of keys and looked us over carefully to make sure we were not monsters or anything before letting us in……..
Anyway, my time here has taught me so much, and for this blog, I want to reflect primarily on my time in the lab and what I have learned so far. The important thing I have learned is that you should always be curious and question things. As one of my lab mates explained to me, “….there are two kinds of people in this lab when it comes to a failed experiment: those who continuously redo the experiment until they get the results they want and those who ask what went wrong.” Keeping an open mind is the most important part of the scientific process, because otherwise, you will just get stuck on one little thing in the infinite study of life and our environment. Whenever I think of this I am reminded of a quote by Einstein where he said:
“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” — Albert Einstein
His paradoxical insight is something that has really resonated with me in my time here. Everyday, I am inspired to learn as much as possible with the ultimate goal that I will realize just how much more there is out there for me to learn. Ever since I was little I have never been able to grasp the concept of infinity, especially infinite time. The planet we live on has been around for 4.5 billion years, just imagine how long that is. I spent an entire week, starting early and ending late, measuring 6 different parts of a rice plant for 20 seedlings in each of the 150 lines of rice. That is 18,000 measurements! In that time, me and my lab mate listened to nearly every playlist on Spotify, even country music, (anyone who knows me knows that I am not a very big fan of country music) to pass the time. In addition, I was able to have a lot of time to just think. I realized that most of science is luck. Time and money are both limiting factors and when a scientific breakthrough occurs, such as a researcher discovering a special gene or a beneficial mutation, not all of it is due to skill or technique. In fact, it rarely is. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing but respect for scientists. All I am saying is that when we put the vastness of our universe in perspective, scientists are searching for specific grains of sand on the beach that is our universe.
Now, let’s talk about the part of the beach I am studying. My lab focuses on rice and my experiment uses a mini core collection of 600 different varieties of rice from all over the world. As I have previously mentioned, the goal of my experiment is to correlate a phenotype (mesocotyl elongation) with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). So, once I have collected the gargantuan amount of data that this experiment requires, I will conduct a Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS).
To start my experiment, I was introduced to the mini core collection of rice seeds — just a few big bags filled with smaller bags of rice seeds. After learning the surprisingly intricate knot for the rice bags, I spent one week doing nothing but untying the bags, taking 30 seeds out, putting them in a paper bag, and labeling the line number on the bag. I did this 600 times! I saw nearly every shape, color, and size rice comes in. Because I was working in my own lab room I just played music off my phone at full volume. Every couple of hours one of my lab mates would come in to see how I was doing and talk to me. One of my lab mates came many times just so he could sing to American music — his favorites were Mariah Carey and Adele.
After I finished putting the seeds into the little bags, I put the seeds in a 37ºC (98ºF) environment so they would leave dormancy — after 6 weeks here I have finally adjusted to both the Celsius and the metric system. Then, I spent the next couple of hours on an escapade in search of 150 glass bottles — I opened nearly every cardboard box in the lab. After all the seeds were ready and I had found enough glass bottles, I filled each glass bottle with soil, 30 seeds, and water. When each bottle was complete, I packed them into a cardboard box and covered the bottles with trash bags to simulate darkness. I pushed the box on a cart and brought it to a controlled environment on the sixth floor of my lab building. After I dropped off the 150 bottles I felt so accomplished and walked back to my lab, feeling good about all the hard work I had put in.
When the rice finished growing both me and my lab mates were surprised to see how well the seeds germinated — on average, 25 of the 30 grew successfully! Next, began the herculean task of measuring the 6 traits of each plant: first internode, second internode, first leaf (prophyllus), coleoptile, shoot length, and mesocotyl. We began by measuring each plant by hand. After much research and trial and error, we finished by taking pictures of all 30. Then we used an online software where we traced over the plants with our cursor, measuring the pixels and converting it to centimeters. We started at a rate of 4 bottles an hour. Then, gradually perfecting our measuring techniques, we finally finished 5 days later, with a triumphant rate of 30 bottles an hour!
Just yesterday I finished compiling all the raw data into a spreadsheet and calculated an average measurement for each of the 6 traits. I will take this data and create numerous graphs, running each measurement at least once as the independent variable. In addition, I will run many statistical analyses to draw as many conclusions as possible from the raw data from the first 150. Now that the lengthy and time consuming process has been perfected, I can begin the next 150 rice lines in my experiment! When all the 600 lines have been completed we will then get to work with the different genomes. Our lab does not have big enough computers to hold the genomes to perform the GWAS, so we will go to Peking University — which is only 5 subway stops away — to finish the experiment. I am extremely excited to see the results of my experiment, but, as I have learned, I must keep an open mind regardless of the results so I can learn as much as possible.
My experiment is considered to be novel PhD level research, the results of which can have a meaningful impact on both the scientific research realm and the whole world. Once again, I want to thank Crystal, Ambassador Quinn, Mr. Ruan, and Dr. Norman Borlaug, for believing that students like me can make a difference in the world. I will never be able to truly emphasize how appreciative I am of this unique opportunity to work on this project in this amazing lab with my lab mates and mentors.
