Reflection of Shadowing Experiences

This week I shadowed two of the other students participating in the intensive J-term research. Cara was working with drosophila and Ryan is trying to synthesize biodiesel from various vegetable oils using enzymes. These two experiments were vastly different from each other and were also different from my project. However, some similarities did exist in the type of critical thinking that is involved in the process of research.

Ryan is working with two different enzymes, porcine and novozym 435. His overall goal is to optimize the yield of biodiesel from vegetable oils using an enzyme. He told me that he chose the porcine enzyme because it was inexpensive and was readily available. The novozym 453 was chosen because previous research had shown it to be a good catalyst for the conversion of soybean oil to biodiesel. However, novozym is priced at over one hundred dollars for a relatively small sample and it is not economically feasible to use something like this in industry (which is the real world application of Ryan’s project). I asked Ryan about this and he explained that a more efficient process was to immobilize the enzyme onto a larger substance so that it can be recovered after the reaction, rather than being discarded.

When I observed Ryan he had just immobilized the porcine enzyme one to celite. While I am not sure of the exact protocol he used liquid nitrogen to flash freeze the enzyme and the celite to immobilize porcine onto the celite. The water from the reaction mixture was removed at room temperature using a vacuum evaporator.

While this is an entirely different project I did notice a similarity in this portion of his research. Ryan has chosen a less expensive enzyme to use to test the efficiency of the immobilization process before he applies this technique to his novozym. This is very similar to testing the viability of the primers that I ordered. Before running a PCR on PACSIN 2 with the Phusion enzyme, I test to see if my new primers are effective at initiating the replication by testing with a less expensive enzyme, PAQ 5000.

While I was talking to Ryan I asked if he would employ some type of positive control to see if his porcine was adhered to the celite. He told me that he was not sure how he would do that and we discussed possibilities for several minutes. This is much like the work in the DNA lab. Often times we bounce ideas off of each other and ask others for assistance. I suggested looking at the known enzymatic functions of porcine and testing it on one of these substrates.

While Ryan was working on a completely different project I was able to see these similarities in critical thinking strategies. It is good to know that all of our projects relate to some degree. I look forward to hearing about his findings this week!

Cara has been examining the effects of exposure to high concentrations of cadmium and its effect on the breeding patterns of the flies. She has implemented the use of several controls to ensure that her results are viable. Her protocols involve mating virgin flies which ensures that there are no behavioral changes due to the female being already fertilized. She also uses a media for some flies that do not contain any cadmium. This is significant because it provides a control in a statistical analysis of the experimental trials. I did not ask Cara but I assume that once all of the data collection is done she will use several chi-squared tests that will compare the control trials against the experimental trials.

While at first glance our experiments do not appear to have similarities there is one main connection between our two projects. Her project involves concentrations that have never been tried before. Though these concentrations have never been tried before, she did mention that lower levels of cadmium exposure have been tested in previous research. Thus, the questions that arise in her work stem from examining previous research. This is very similar to my research because many of my protocols are adapted from previous research that has optimized certain types of reactions. Both of our projects involve adapting protocols from previous work which makes our research more productive and provides us with the opportunity to ask new questions and seek new answers.

It was a privilege to shadow both Ryan and Cara. They were very informative and were eager to answer questions about their research. After shadowing them I have gained a greater appreciation of research as a whole because I realize that, though the project goal may be different, the process for developing new questions and seeking new answers is congruent through different fields of work.