In ancient Greece, the asclepion was a healing temple dedicated to Asclepius, the God of Medicine. Asclepius learned the art of surgery from the centaur Chiron and had the ability to raise the dead. The Rod of Asclepius is a roughhewn branch entwined with a single serpent.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Labwork I
This past summer, I worked in the lab of Dr. Wiener-Kronish in the Department of Anesthesia. Her particular interest is in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a gram-negative opportunistic bacterium that infects immunocompromised, cystic fibrosis, and burn patients. It's also a very important nosocomial (hospital-acquired) bug. My specific project was to create genetic constructs in Pseudomonas to investigate reciprocally regulated genes. I wanted more training in basic molecular biology techniques such as restriction enzymes, plasmid transformation, and cell culture. In particular, I cloned a few genes, attempting to engineer specific plasmids. It was unfortunately frustrating in that the project was not well prepared for me and so I had to work through a lot of problems that I didn't anticipate. I wasn't able to get significant results, so I'm still working on the project despite the difficulty of continuing research into the school year.
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